The Brown Coal Miner
In the coal country of nineteenth-century Mississippi, Gabriel knows every sound a mountain makes before it gives way. Born into slavery and raised beneath the shadow of the Del Percio plantation, he has become the most trusted miner on the land-but no amount of skill can make him free.
Antonio Del Percio returns from Sicily carrying desires that the world around him has no language for and would answer with violence if discovered. What begins between Gabriel and Antonio in stolen meetings becomes a love that must survive slavery, war, religious fanaticism, betrayal, and a country determined to decide which lives are permitted to matter.
Around them, others search for freedom by whatever road remains: Natasha, stolen from her free family under the disguise of marriage; Evie, sold into a different kind of bondage to save her own; and the hidden community of Pulse Hill, where people gather to love openly for one dangerous night.
Watching from inside the machinery of Confederate power is White Man-an enslaved Black man who has made himself indispensable to Colonel Robert Leake. Intelligent, venomous, and almost impossible to trace, he is prepared to betray anyone, bury the truth, and rewrite history itself to secure his future.
Spanning four decades of American upheaval, The Brown Coal Miner is a sweeping historical novel about forbidden love, race, faith, identity, and the stories a nation chooses to remember. It asks a difficult question: when every side believes itself righteous, who is still willing to see the humanity in everyone?
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