Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC of Rednecks by Taylor Brown.

I was not prepared to read this book. At all. I knew the basic premise - an historical novel of events that took place in 1920-1921 in rural West Virginia. I wasn't prepared to want to do a deep dive into this time and place and find out what actually happened when the "redneck" miners decided to unionized and strike against the corruption rampant in the operation of the mines.

The characters are really great - I felt a kinship to the Lebanese-American doctor and his family having had my own grandparents emigrate here to the US from Syria at the turn of the 20th century. Big Frank and his family were strongly developed as well. While I knew of Mother Jones I didn't truly understand her role in much of the early 20th century and including her here worked well to explain things.

All in all a fascinating story that I had not heard before.