Afterdamp

The company says her husband is dead. Verna can still hear tapping.

West Virginia, 1966. Twenty-five years old and eight months pregnant, Verna Sturgill stands at the mine fence with the other women, waiting for seventeen men to come home.

The fire boss says the air below can sustain life. The company sends concrete.

Verna writes letters. She keeps carbons. When the answers contradict what she heard at the airshaft, she saves those too. Somewhere in the company's paperwork is an explanation, and she intends to make someone give it to her.

At home, the stove needs feeding and a baby is coming. A frightened fire boss begins stopping by. A state inspector offers what help he can. Then a man who should still be underground comes to her door.

The county knows how to care for a woman alone. Food appears on her step. Her coffee waits at the proper seat. Every kindness brings an expectation that she will stop asking.

Verna has a son to raise in this place. She is learning how much its protection costs.

Afterdamp is an adult Appalachian Gothic prequel to The Reclamation, following Verna Sturgill a generation before Ivy's story begins in Overburden. A novella of grief, dangerous intimacy, and a mining town's buried secrets. Contains explicit sexual content and disturbing themes.