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  • Tell Me About My Father: Wasyl's Story by Jayne M. Booth book cover
  • Tell Me About My Father: Wasyl's Story by Jayne M. Booth book cover
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Tell Me About My Father: Wasyl's Story

by Jayne M. Booth

A boy’s questions in coal country

$20.18 USD
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AlbakiReads Editorial

A boy’s questions in coal country

Set in Northeastern Pennsylvania in 1917, this coming-of-age graphic novel connects a family’s financial strain to the dangers and demands of coal mining. Nine-year-old Wasyl wants to help his widowed mother and sisters, while his mother tries to keep him out of the mines. His unanswered questions about his father add another pressure to a household already navigating hard choices. The story brings together child labor, poverty, family secrecy, and the difficult balance between protecting someone and telling the truth. Its historical setting frames those concerns through one family’s experience in a coal community.

Good fit for readers who enjoy

  • Readers interested in historical graphic novels set in coal-mining communities.
  • Readers seeking coming-of-age stories about family hardship and childhood responsibilities.
  • Readers interested in narratives about secrets, loss, and honesty within a family.

Themes

Coal mining and child laborPoverty and family responsibilitySecrecy and truthComing of age

Based on publisher information and book metadata.

Book overview

Tell Me About My Father: Wasyl's Story (Rocked in the Cradle of Coal series)

 

It is 1917 and the United States is recovering from the costly first World War. Inflation hits hard, especially in the coal regions of Northeastern Pennsylvania. Long work days for low pay provided barely enough to scrape by before, but now families are forced to make difficult decisions. What groceries are optional? Does Mama really need cream in her coffee? Probably not. Is a nine-year-old boy too young to quit school and work full-time in the mines? Maybe... maybe not.

 

In this coming-of-age story, Katie's brother Wasyl sees his widowed mother struggling to buy food and pay bills. He wants to get a job to help her and his sisters, but Mama insists that he not work in the mines as so many other boys his age are doing. He wishes he had a father to guide him through the harsh realities of growing up in coal country, but Wasyl's father is a big secret that no one ever discusses. The only thing Wasyl knows about his father is what Mama always says, "the mines killed him." Then one day the truth comes out in the most traumatic way.

 

There is so much he doesn't understand but forced to face the truth, Wasyl wrestles with the question: Is it kinder to keep secrets, or to deal with them honestly and openly even if it hurts? Wasyl is about to find out.

 

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