We meet Huw Morgan as a small boy, the youngest in his family, his brothers and sisters settling (or not) into their roles, and we follow him into his late teens; however, his story is being written from much later life, with the horror of a pit slag heap that’s slipped pressing and pressing onto the little house where he was raised and lives now. Like me he was obviously proud of his Welsh heritage, so I’m not sure why he had to dress it up in any other way. The morality of “Chapel” is show in the true light of day–some are sincere believers who act kindly, others are full of their own importance and take pains to put people down–just like today. In the old world from Huw’s point of view, such a dreadful crime would and could not have been committed.

There are some aspects that may stand out to modern day readers be it the strongly patriarchal sentiment expressed at one point or more seriously, the incident of vigilante justice of a sort, but these are things that I think are to be seen in light of time and context. What sparked this recollection was a piece of cloth that his mother had used to tie her hair which Huw, for lack of anything better to do the job, was now using to pack his clothes. I felt like I had been very patiently waiting for the author to set the stage and give me all of the background and let me get to know the characters.We know right off the bat that they were a mining family in Wales, at a time when the living had not become too hard for miners. With the departure of Davy, Owen and Gwilym, the union started to acquire a revolutionary fervor with the coming of new leaders influenced by Marxist thinking. But perhaps the things that he held to be good and right to do, were not the good and right things for our time, or if they were, then perhaps he carried them out with too much force or with too straight a tongue, and through that put men against him.

Through it all, Huw struggles to reconcile the life that he knew with the life that is and to remember the good and the beautiful along with the bad and the ugly. They should have known better than anyone that love would have made Angharard far, far more happier than marrying someone rich.

As Huw grows, so does the vast heap of mine tailings--slag mountains that tower over the town, pressing in relentlessly on his home, the refuge that he and his family love so well. I guess that's it, though: it's nostalgic and sentimental and it lets the reader feel all weepy about industrialised Wales, without anger or overt political leanings.