The Running on Red Dog Road

<p><em>Mining companies piled trash coal in a slag heap and set it ablaze. The coal burned up but the slate didn't. The heat turned it rose and orange and lavender. The dirt road I lived on was paved with that sharp-edged rock. We called it red dog. Grandma told me Don't you go running on that red dog road. But I do. </em></p><p>Gypsies faith-healers moonshiners and snake handlers weave through Drema's childhood in 1940s Appalachia after her father is killed in the coal mines her mother goes off to work as a Rosie the Riveter and she is left in the care of devout Pentecostal grandparents. What follows is a spitfire of a memoir that reads like a novel with intrigue sweeping emotion and indisputable charm. Drema's coming of age is colored by tent revivals with Grandpa poetry-writing hobos and traveling carnivals and through it all she serves witness to a multi-generational family of saints and sinners whose lives defy the stereotypes. Just as she defies her own.</p><p><em>Running On Red Dog Road</em> is proof that truth is stranger than fiction especially when it comes to life and faith in an Appalachian childhood.</p>