The decade following World War II becomes one of tragedy, excitement, and unexpected change for the five Novak children and the residents of their western Pennsylvania community of company houses, church festivals, and union squabbles.

When Maggie MacAuley returns to the small coal town of her childhood, she has no intention of staying. Her life is in Chicago now. There's nothing to keep her in Skingle Creek ... nothing but the discovery that a man who has lived most of his life for the children of Skingle Creek is no longer the hero of Maggie's childhood but seems destined to become the love of her life. In Maggie's quest for independence, she finds her greatest strength in sacrifice...

In the coal mining region of mid-nineteenth century eastern Pennsylvania, Phin witnesses a murder and runs for his life, pursued by a mysterious man and a horse with the instincts of a bloodhound.

Curley Hines has lost his father, mother, and brother to coal mining, and now he lives with his grandfather in the Appalachian mountains of Wonder Gap, Kentucky--but when the mining company prepares to destroy their mountain he must use the words his grandfather has taught him to save Red Hawk Mountain, even if it means losing the life he loves.

In 1957, problems at the mine threaten to ruin Christmas for fifth-grader Don, his family, and the rest of their Oklahoma coal town, but Don's bloodhound, Frank, is determined to do whatever it takes to make the holiday special for Don and his six-year-old sister, Susan. Alternate chapters are told from the human and canine points of view.

Discusses the mining and transporting of coal, its uses and products, problems and difficulties associated with its use, and future technology.

Sixteen-year-old Wren MacAvoy works as a coal miner for a domed city where, after 200 years, society is complacent and coal is diminishing until she unwittingly becomes a catalist for a revolution that destroys the dome, which could mean the end of everything.

Utilizing archival photographs and live on-site footage, the stories of the children of miners who came from all over the world to settle in Colorado mining camps and mine coal in the Rocky Mountains is told.

Learning elemental magic from her witch aunt after her Tennessee coal miner father's black-lung death, Anna May falls in love with a stonemason who abandons his work as a gravestone cutter to pursue true art.