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    The Well and the Mine
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    The Well and the Mine
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    The Well and the Mine
    Audiobook8 hours

    The Well and the Mine

    Written by Gin Phillips

    Narrated by T.J. Kenneally and Margaret Nichols

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    In 1931 Carbon Hill, a small Alabama coal-mining town, nine-year-old Tess Moore watches a woman shove the cover off the family well and toss in a baby without a word. For the Moore family, focused on helping anyone in need during the Great Depression, the apparent murder forces them to face the darker side of their community and question the motivations of family and friends. Backbreaking work keeps most of the townspeople busy from dawn to dusk, and racial tensions abound. For parents, it's a time when a better life for the children means sacrificing health, time, and every penny that can be saved. For a miner, returning home after work is a possibility, not a certainty. However, next to daily thoughts of death, exhausting work, and race are the lingering pleasures of sweet tea, feather beds, and lightning bugs yet to be caught.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateApr 21, 2009
    ISBN9780307578242
    Unavailable
    The Well and the Mine
    Author

    Gin Phillips

    Gin Phillips has written critically acclaimed books for adults, and is now making her foray into children’s literature. Her first novel, The Well and the Mine won the 2009 Barnes & Noble Discover Award. Gin worked for many years as a freelance magazine editor, and now lives in Birmingham, Alabama with her husband, children, and their dog.

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    Reviews for The Well and the Mine

    4/5

    255 ratings56 reviews

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    • 4/5
      This is a wonderful book; surprisingly a debut novel. The book takes place in a mining town in Alabama in 1931, and the sense of place is almost a character itself. The story opens with a distressing event, and the mystery surrounding the event carries through the book, but really it is a story about a family, a place, a time, and a way of living. There are multiple narrators, each well developed characters, each giving the reader a different perspective on this hard life.

      The descriptions of the day-to-day lives of each family member are so well done that we learn so much but we as readers are never taken out of the story. The chores, the back breaking work, the limited food and how it is cooked are all intrinsic to the characters and the story. The author addresses poverty, racism, the unfairness of life, loss, and despair, and yet it is such a hopeful, warm and uplifting novel!

      The writer has skills - her descriptions are beautiful, we see and feel and smell what they do, and despite the harsh reality of life in this mining town, there is so much beauty and love and it is inspirational!

      Read this book, it will make you appreciate your family,the food on your table and most of all; your washing machine!
    • 5/5
      This southern story revolves around the Moore family who live in Alabama during the depression. The five members of the family (Albert, Leta, Virgie, Tess and Jack) contribute to the story by narrating from their own perspective. The story progresses in this manner without the retelling of events.It begins one evening on the back porch. Tess, the nine-year-old daughter, watches a woman throw her baby into their family well. Add that shocking action together with coal mines, racism, poverty, and down home living - you get yourself this authentic southern book.Oddly enough, this one was a difficult one for me to rate. When I closed the book, I wasn't left with the feeling of awe or wow, which usually prompts a high rating. However, soon after, I remembered the feelings I had while I was reading it. I had a tremendous sense of time and place; I could hear each character's distinctive and realistic voice; the word choice was interesting and the overall tone of the book was excellent. In this case, it ends up that I didn't have to be blown away in order to appreciate its value. This first time novelist is someone to watch. She knows how to tell a southern story. (4.25/5)Originally posted on: "Thoughts of Joy..."
    • 5/5
      Slow to start but it picks up nicely, The Well and the Mine is the story of a family living in a 1930s Alabama coal mining town. The story begins with a young girl witnessing a woman dropping a baby in their well. As she and her sister attempt to discover who did this and why, we learn more about the family and the society in which they live. Each short chapter is told in the voice of one of the five family members. The youngest child’s is told from an adult perspective and so we discover some tidbits about their life after the close of the book. These are characters that will grow on you and you’ll find yourself caring about their lives. The ending works and although it wouldn’t seem to be, this is really an uplifting and enjoyable read. The author also did a lot of research on coal mines and mining and so in addition to racial strife there are also some thoughtful comments on labor conditions of the time. As others have said, the book is reminiscent of To Kill a Mockingbird. It also shares some of the same themes and style as Mudbound and I recommend it highly.
    • 2/5
      My biggest problem with this book? Nothing happens. It's not just slow moving, it's lacking in plot. And while the writing did incorporate some elements of believable dialogue, it was filled with the kind of one-liners that have no place in first person narrative - the kind of things that are so obviously meant to sound "deep."
    • 4/5
      Simple prose that packs a punch. In a quiet way this book takes on many social issues and everyday family issues. The characters are real and endearing. There is a history of coal mine workers in my family so I am drawn to stories about the mines and the people that worked in them.
    • 5/5
      Loved this book!
    • 3/5
      Set in Alabama in 1931, the story is told in the family's five voices. Teen Virgie, Preteen Tess, little brother Jack & mom & Dad. Hardscrabble farmers and Dad also works in the mine, this is the story of a tiny town, racism, a company town and trying to get by.
    • 4/5
      Took a fair while to get into this one but glad I persevered. Slow family drama of which I'm not complaining as these usually are more character driven stories. This one did not disappoint. People, conversations, all well written and believable. I did find when the baby and the well mystery was resolved a sense of letdown. Not sure what I was expecting. Just felt there could have been more of a story there. All in all a good book and one I would recommend.
    • 5/5
      Gin Phillips beautifully and accurately puts us in a mining town during an era before civil rights or OASHA, and gives us characters that are fully formed, complex, and warm blooded.
    • 5/5
      A book that makes me wonder if Harper Lee ever donated her eggs. Wonderfully done.
    • 3/5
      A very nicely written book. Well-developed and robust characters. I like the perspective of the different voices. Looking forward to more books by Gin Phillips.
    • 3/5
      The premise of this book was gripping and I generally liked the characters, but the plot became more and more tiresome as the book dragged on.
    • 4/5
      This is a great character-driven book about a family in a small coal mining town in Alabama. It reminded me a bit of To Kill a Mockingbird [one of my all-time favorites:] with the way it created a world and characters you could so clearly see. I highly recommend it.
    • 5/5
      By Gin PhillipsReading this beautiful book takes you back in time to a special place and its people. We see and experience 1931 Alabama through the eyes and voices of a coal mining family. Each voice tells of their hardships, as they see and feel them. They speak of their own lives while reflecting on others. They are guided by deep morals and values. Through them we are given an impression of the coal mining industry. We see the effect on those who actually work the mines and their families. One warm night, nine year old Tess witnesses a woman tossing a baby into her family’s well. Haunted by it, with the aid of her older sister, she sets out to solve the mystery surrounding such a horrific act. As the summer heats up, the community is also drawn into the mystery of the well.Gin Phillips created a heartfelt story with characters authentic to the period and place. Her book gives an understanding and respect for these people, who represent an integral part of American history.
    • 4/5
      From the cover blurb I expected this to be a mystery book, a slim but dark thriller with all sorts of scary small-town secrets coming out. I was mistaken. This is instead a portrait of a small mining town and a family in that town going through the Depression and getting by as best they can. It's slow-moving but often sweet, like honey.Each member of the Moore family gets a turn to narrate, although Jack, the youngest, speaks as an old man recollecting events from long ago. Through their eyes you see the dangerous and difficult job of coal mining, the struggles to keep house properly while under great economic strain, the usual trials of growing up, and children from less fortunate families dying of malnutrition in full view of everyone. The business with the baby is brought up on a regular basis, but it takes a backseat to the rest of the story.I enjoyed this book a lot. However, I must warn people that there are no thrills to be had here.
    • 4/5
      A interesting story of life in the 1030's. I could actually picture the town and its dirt roads and all the men leaving their homes before sunrise to head to the mines to work. Gives a understanding and feeling of what life may of been like for families of all nature back then. When Tess, the young girl who see's someone throwing a baby into her families well, she is determined to figure out who did this and why on earth would someone do such a thing. A young girl learns about the hardships her parents and many of her friends parents go through to feed and take care of their families.
    • 5/5
      A touch of To Kill a Mockingbird and Fried Green Tomatos, but still original, entertaining, touching, and enlightening.
    • 4/5
      8-year-old Tess Moore of Carbon Hill, Walker County, Alabama sees a woman throw a baby in their well. At first no one believes her, but when a blanket is pulled up while drawing water and then the bloated body is discovered, they realize she did witness the event. The coroner determines that the baby was dead before he was placed in the well, but that doesn't stop Tess and her sister Virgie from wanting to find out who would do such a thing. The book is told from alternating points of view of the Moore family members. It is set against the backdrop of the Depression in a coal-mining community. The author does a good job of portraying the religious devotion of the characters who have denominational affiliations. The author also touches on the racism that was prevalent in the community during that time.
    • 4/5
      This is a curious novel that I would class as 'YA' - short, simple, told from the point of view of two young girls, and with a slightly preachy undertone. The Moore family - Albert, Leta, Virgie, Tess and Jack - live in Carbon Hill, a mining town in Alabama. Though they suffer the hardships of the Depression like most families in America, they are content with what they have and able to help others. When youngest daughter Tess witnesses a shadowy figure drop a baby into their well, the children are forced to confront some of the harsher realities of life.The telling of the tale was a bit hit and miss. Although I settled into the story, the fractured narratives from the family didn't really become individual 'voices' for me - I kept having to check the name at the start of each section to remind myself who was telling the story now. And only Jack, the young son, is speaking as an adult looking back, perhaps because he is so young when the story takes place - the others are all speaking in the here and now. So Jack is more of a literary device, and his random references to what happens to everyone in the future are unnecessary and don't really connect with the main plot. Virgie chooses her path in life as a young girl, and without knowing what happens in between to influence Tess, the accounting of her years just seemed tacked on.The mystery of the baby in the well holds the story together well, and brings out the different personalities of Virgie and Tess, but I found the ending weak and a little abrupt. I was hoping the explanation would have more of a personal impact on the family.So enjoyable on the whole, especially the evocative descriptions of daily family life in 1930s Alabama, but I would have preferred sticking with Tess, the more natural and outgoing sister, and learning about her family through her eyes.
    • 4/5
      A strong start but then it starts to meander and mutate a bit. As the title foreshadows, it weaves two main strands - the mystery of who tossed the baby in the well with a picture of a coalminer's life in the south during the Depression, with race relations being a strong element. The story is told through the separate voices of four family members. - two young sisters who set out to try and solve the mystery of the dead baby, their mother Leta, and their father Albert. The latter is the most interesting character - goodhearted, hard working, generous to a fault - even to his Negro neighbours. The fifth family member is just a useful device for the author - he's the baby of the family and by the end of the novel it's clear he's only been included to provide a longer term view of the family outcomes. The theme of children solving crimes reminded me of A Crime in the Neighbourhood - and of course the father brings Atticus Finch to mind.
    • 4/5
      Set in depression-era, small-town Alabama, this novel opens with a baby being tossed into a well. But, this poignant slice-of-life is really about poverty, racial tensions, labor conditions, and the ties of family. Don't let the gruesome beginning stop you from savoring this compelling, beautifully written book.
    • 5/5
      This book reminded me a little bit of To Kill a Mockingbird, in that it was about a decent family living in the South and dealing with poverty and race relations, in addition to the baby that gets thrown in their well at the beginning of the book, which serves as the narrative center for the book. I loved the characters and found myself rooting for good things to happen to them. This would be a great book for book clubs to discuss.
    • 4/5
      The Well and the Mine was a surprising read. The synopsis of the story doesn't do it justice. This is more than the story of Tess and Virgie trying to solve the mystery of the dead baby. It is about the town that they live in, the people that lived there (both black and white), the era they lived in, and the way they survived.One of the best things about The Well and the Mine is that it is from the first person prespective of all the members of the Moore family. In each story the reader gets an view into all five members point of view. Normally this style of writing can be pretty trickly to do but Phillips made it easy to adjust to the shifting character perspectives by labeling the change. Also, when switching from perspective to perspective the themes and timeline stayed the same. The youngest member of the family, Jack, set up the beginning of each chapter by reflecting on his childhood. By presenting each members view point readers got to see not only how the events at the mine affected them at the time but also how they changed their future.The characters were very well developed. They were all likable and relateable. Some of the characters were reminiscent of characters in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. Tess comes of as a lot like Scout, a tomboy that is just enjoying her life until something happens that shakes her would. Albert is a little like Atticus but less scholarly. All of Albert's veiw point were based more of experience. His views on race and how his children were suppose to be raised were passed on personal experince and his beliefs about good or bad. It was interesting how the incident at the well and made him question his own actions and short comings.One of the most interesting things about the story (personally) was the treatment of race issues in 1931. The children (Tess, Virgie, and Jack) never really deal with race, there is one incident with Jack. Albert is the one that deals with race the most and it is this experince that makes his sections so compelling to read.
    • 4/5
      It took several months for me to finish The Well and the Mine. I say this knowing that this book is excellently written. The characters are well sculpted, the story is strong. What wasn't for me was the simple quietness of the book. But, this is also part of it's cleverness. The tone and story is soft and slow, much like the life being imagined for us. The time is the 1930s before the world was complicated by war and with the 5 person family we are shown their quiet (almost ideal) world through their eyes. Phillips uses the technique that I attach to Faulkner by telling the story through each characters' voice. I would think it's a difficult way to write or envision a book, but she does it well. It's a well written and well crafted book. It simply wasn't my preference of topic or time period.
    • 3/5
      The Well and the Mine opens with nine-year old Tess witnessing a woman tossing an infant into the family well. I thought I was going to find it difficult to put the book down; but, instead, Gin Phillips soon let me down and I found it an effort to keep reading at times. The two main flaws I found with the book are what appears to be an unsuccessful attempt to meld two short stories into one novel and bland, shallow characters.Over half-way through the book, Albert, the father does develop past a monodeminsional character; but, he is the only member of the Moore family to whom Phillips gave any depth. Jack's character had potential, but, it wasn't developed. Leta, Virgie, and Tess were basically unlikable. I liked Phillips' writing style and would consider reading another book by her. She seems to have a good historical perspective on life in a Depression Era mining community.
    • 4/5
      Mention fiction written from multiple points of view, and whose work comes instantly to mind? Well, if it’s MY mind, the answer is William Faulkner-- The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying. It’s an ambitious undertaking, and when Faulkner did it, it was considered experimental. In The Well and the Mine, Gin Phillips has chosen to tell a fairly simple story through multiple narrative voices, one for each of the five members of the Moore family of Carbon Hill, Alabama.The central plot element of this novel is the search for the woman who threw a baby into the Moores’ covered well one dark night. Nine-year-old Tess Moore saw it happen, and even though the adults seem not to be overly concerned about who did it or why (especially once it is determined that the child was dead of natural causes before being dropped into the well), Tess and her older sister set about to discover whether all the newish babies in the community are alive and well. In the process, they introduce us not only to the Moores, but to quite a few of their friends and acquaintances as well. Albert Moore is fairly prosperous, as coal miners in Alabama in the 1930’s go. He owns his own farm, so while there is never any spare money, and rarely a bit of meat on the table, there is always enough food for the family, and sometimes enough to share with the less fortunate. His wife, Leta, works non-stop to keep her home clean, her children fed, and her husband comfortable. She pretends not to be hungry so someone else can have an extra portion. She boils work clothes in a tub in the yard on blistering hot summer days. She defers to her husband’s decisions even though in some significant instances she disagrees with him quite strongly. The only thing that saves her from being a pure literary cliché is that she does all this as though it were exactly what she wants to do---there is no hint of the drudge in her. At the end of a long day, she and Albert each take comfort from the solid warmth of the other’s tired presence in their bed. The oldest daughter, Virgie, is very pretty, starting to attract the attention of boys, but she has in mind a future that does not depend on getting a man to marry her. Tess is the questioner, the tomboy, the one her parents worry about. Their little brother, Jack, although too young to play much of a role in his sisters’ little investigation, speaks to us from the here and now, telling us things about his family and their life that don’t so much advance the narrative as fill in the back story. The technique of changing narrators doesn’t feel experimental anymore, but there were times in this book where it did not work particularly well. Some of the change-overs were just awkward, and at first the girls’ voices were not quite distinct from one another, despite the difference in their ages. The layout of the text also contributed to a disjointed feeling for me. At the beginning of each new section, the narrator would be identified at the left margin in tiny italic script. Then the first line of text was presented in all caps, followed by a second line indented as though it were the beginning of a paragraph. I tried to present an example, but the fonts and indents wouldn't hold when I copied and pasted this. It’s hard to describe, but I felt like I was tripping over something each time it happened. I don’t have much patience for typesetting shenanigans like this.I tried very hard not to make comparisons to To Kill a Mockingbird, as others have done, while reading this story. To do so, I think, is to shortchange Gin Phillips. Despite a story line that I found less than compelling, and an anti-climactic ending, Phillips has given us a novel with characters more complicated than Lee’s, in a Southern setting profoundly realistic. While this is presented as a reminiscence, it is virtually free of the nostalgia that permeates Scout Finch’s look back in time. I would be very much surprised if this is the only novel this author has in her, and I will look forward to more of her writing.
    • 4/5
      The Well and the Mine is told through the alternating veiwpoints of Tess and her family members. Gin Phillips does a fantastic job creating memorable characters! The plot of the story is that Tess witnesses a baby being thrown into a well and, with the help of her sister, sets out to discover who's baby it was. However, the book is really about so much more. It covers issues like poverty, working conditions, racial equality, woman's vocational choices and more--all set in the Depression Era. I really enjoyed this story.
    • 4/5
      I was captured by the first line of the story, “After she threw the baby in, nobody believed me for the longest time.” Like the two sisters who set out to answer the mystery I was also complelled to measure up each female character that crossed the page to see if she was the woman that discarded her child. The story ends gently and kindly, expressing that rushing to judgement may not unveil the complete truth.
    • 3/5
      The first few pages of this book drew me to the story but after that it fell flat. It seemed as thought the book climaxed in the first chapter with Tess witnessing the baby being thrown in the well and didn't really go anyway from there. However, not knowing that the story wouldn't really come to fruition, I continued to read thinking that it was only going to get better, but sadly I was disappointed. I will say that the book kept me interested because I did feel as though with the turning of a page something interesting may materialize, but unfortunately it never really did. I felt the story as a whole was anti-climactic. I didn't like it and i didn't hate it, the story really didn't make me feel anything. I don't think that i would recommend this book to a friend.
    • 3/5
      A dramatic opening scene, where 9-yr-old Tess watches in the dark as an unknown woman drops a baby down her back-porch well, sets the mood. This is a recreation of a small mining town in rural Alabama during the Depression. A family of five depend mainly on the father's salary at the mine (and his surviving) and a farm they own; and, the amount of work it takes them to get through the day is staggering. But the family is actually prosperous, doing better than most, even owning car.The book is maybe great in parts. After the opening scene we are left watching wide-eyed, along with Tess, as different members of the family swap taking over the narration. Her older sister Virgie gives a slightly more mature account of the children's tale. Her father brings us inside his mine as well as into his own quietly moral character. Tess's sacrificial mother reveals more than any other character just by telling about her day-to-day routines, how she works nonstop, how she can't stop and in some cases can't sleep, how she cares for everyone while skipping meals whenever she can get away without without anyone noticing. Finally, Jack, the younger brother, adds a twist by talking about events from hindsight as he sees it looking back 70 years later in 2004.But eventually the book lost it's magic for me. The different narrator's break up the flow and then they began to feel forced. Historical descriptions are shoehorned in, as are aspects of racism; some characters become, painfully, a little too good. For about a hundred or so pages the book just felt very clunky to me. Then, right about page 200 I felt the book come back together, so to speak. I started to believe I was getting a sense of the time and place - just in time for end.Overall, I was mixed on this one. It's a first novel, and, taking that into account, I might try the author again.