(Image credit: www.powells.com)Hamilton, Virginia. M.C. Higgins, The Great. NY: Simon & Schuster, 1974.
A young boy comes of age in the mountains of Ohio as strip mining threatens their way of life. When his father refuses to acknowledge the danger, M.C. must decide whether to take a stand or to shepherd them along.
M.C. Higgins watches over his little sister Macie Pearl and his brothers as they swim in the lake and scamper up the hill to their rustic house with its' parlor of hand-me-downs. "They stay safe. They listen to me."
Life on Sarah's mountain is full of majesty and secret dangers and buried pasts. It all comes together as two strangers pay a visit, a friend is acknowledged, and environmental degradation raises its' head in the form an oppressive leftover strip-mining heap.
Like the generations before and after them, the Higgins clan is full of different personalities with hopes and dreams and fun and frustrations all their own. The fabric of family holds them together through good times and bad. As M.C. comes of age and challenges his father's assumptions and prejudices he learns the true price of greatness.
Newberry Medal. National Book Award. Boston Globe-Horn Book Award.
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