I grew up 3rd generation in a Polish community & have played polka music. I have never read a book that I could relate to more than this & I felt it was personally written for me. As I was familiar with the foods,customs,songs,musicians mentioned,& the highs felt when cutting a good polka sound, I was astounded at the background research that was done by this author. I give a big "ditto" to the previous review from a "Slav from Cleveland. Besides being a "must read" for anyone with my kind of background,it is simply a very good story.

A touching story that stays with you long after it's finished. I would love to read a sequel!

"The Clarinet Polka" is a great read by a talented author. Based on this book, I'm definitely going to look up his previous novels.

The characters in "The Clarinet Polka" are complex and interesting, and his portrayal of small-town Polish/Catholic life is lifelike and strangely sweet, despite dealing with topics like alcoholism and death in the Vietnam War. I really loved this book!

Jeanne Mozier came up with a great idea when she started collecting information for this book. There are so many guides to natural wonders, historical and educational sites, monuments, and so on. This is really something different for people who have a lot of imagination and curiosity. I live right next to West Virginia, but now I can't wait to get out and explore some of the more "way out" aspects of the state.

Found this book to be amusing, informative, easy to use and read. I felt like the book was written just for me to reminisce about how much I miss the beauty anf uniqueness of West Virginia. Please don't stop with West Virginia. I'm sure there are lots of oddities in many other states. Even here in Florida I meet people from WV and always tell them about the book and they now all enjoy their own copies.

Its almost as much fun to just sit and read as to use it for a guide to travel the state. This book makes folks look at WV in a new and more exciting light. I really like the chapters on Great Plumbing and Shopping Treasures. The food chapter was also a treat.

Coke works at Hazelwood closing chapter on demise on steel in entire region. Read also: Homestead, with new forward by author, best one-town summary

I read this years ago, and I thought it was an excellent analysis of the collapse of the steel industry in Pittsburgh, filled with compelling tales of individual people.

The books feels like a Greek tragedy, in which the protagonists are doomed to a slow slide towards the edge of a cliff. Institutionalized conflict overcomes the efforts of people from both labor and maangement to halt, or at least slow the inevitable slide.

For people who think that the current dot.com crash is a serious downturn, this book offers a very good counter-perspective. When an area loses 100K jobs in 10 years, and whole towns essentially close, that's a *real* downturn.

On the other hand, there's always hope. Pittsburgh has bounced back, and has a much more diversified economy. The last time I visited, I could see the sky, which was more difficult in the steel days. To grasp those days, either see the early Tom Cruise movie "All The Right Moves", or for depth, read this book.

This is an excellent book for anyone who wants to learn about what went wrong in this basic industry. Not only a study of the collapse of the steel industry in the Mon Valley, the book is also a study of the pain of postindustrialization that swept the country in the 1980's. Esentially, the author is writing about a national trend, but focuses on the Pittsburgh area, which is really a microcosm. It is also a good look at what happens when unions and management can't get their acts together.

This box is about life, one life in particular, the author's life. It covers the time from the time he tries to give his three week old sister popcorn until his daughter is killed in a car accident; he retires in Europe, and has a stroke. It descries 21 days in a hospital. The hospital in on the Grand Canary Island. I believe you will be surprised by the hospital and the care he received.

In between the popcorn incident with his baby sister and his stroke 60 years later he covered a good part of the world and got an education at the same time. His father died when he was 8 and his mother raised him on a West Virginia hill farm until he was 18. His mother then managed the farm and made a good living for Roger and his sister and brother. He worked on the farm along with his sister and brother until the Korean War started when he enlisted in the US Air Force.

He stayed in the Air Force for 8 years, 4 of which he spent in Japan. When he was honorable discharged from the US Air Force he went to work for Bendix as a tech rep.

With Bendix he was working in communications, radar, lasers, and computers in hardware and software. His work took him from Europe, to Libya, and Saudi Arabia to Alaska by way of Australia. When he was working in Europe he spent time in Turkey and on the Azores Islands. During his stay he married a Spanish Lady he later to went to Maryland, right outside of Washington D. C. where his daughter was borne. In Maryland he was a tech writer. Several years (12) of his working life was with NASA (as a contractor). He was manning a console on the Manned Space Flight Station in Canary Island when Armstrong landed on the moon.

You will find Roger's life interesting. But the book is really about growing up, developing a philosophy of life and finally becoming a man.

Autobiography of a Good Life by Roger L. Lee

Roger Lee led a varied and vigorous life on which he wrote an autobiography. He wrote the story of his life after he lost his daughter in a car accident and had a debilitating stroke. He wrote it as part of his self planned and determined recovery effort in the Canary Islands. He relearned his English, which was his mother tongue and touch-typing on a laptop computer using Microsoft Word.

He grew up on a West Virginia hill farm where most of his friends' grandest ambition was to get into the military service for the Korean War. They saw this as a way to get away from the farm and see some of the world.

When Roger was six years old he started his formal education in a one-room country school. The school was a two-mile walk one way. The highest grade in the school was the eighth. He didn't know that there were higher grades available when you got out of the hills.

His father died when he was eight years old. His mother raised him and his younger sister and brother with the aid of the hill farm. His uncle came and gave his mother a hand by moving into a small house on the farm and sharecropping the first three years after his father's death.

Roger Lee enlisted in the US Air Force when he was eligible at 18 years old and went to Texas for basic training. This was the beginning of his education. He went from basic training to radio school in Illinois. Then back to Texas and from there to Japan back to the US for a tour at Washington D. C. From there he went back to Japan again. He came back to Texas after two years. All this time he kept working on a correspondence course in radio and radar and received his First Class Radio License.

He received an honorable discharge from the US Air Force and went to work in the field he knew best, electronics. Later he was sent to Europe and saw a great deal of the western world while working on US contracts. He was always curious about the people he met in the countries where he worked, their food, the way they lived, how they earned a living and their language.

When Roger came back to the US he went to work as a technical writer in electronics and started college at the University of Maryland to improve his writing. He was soon bored by the US and went back to Canary Islands in Spain where he was employed at the Spacecraft Tracking Station.

He stayed at the Canaries Spacecraft Tracking Station until he became the Operations Manager and Armstrong Landed on the moon. Then a good friend took the job of managing the Spacecraft Tracking Station on Ascension Island and asked him to come down with him for a few months. Roger had a family by this time, but he left his wife and daughter, a new car, an apartment, and a yacht that he had acquired in the Canaries and went to Ascension for four months.

Back in the Canaries after four months he was 'sort of at loose ends.' A telephone by another friend gave him something to do. The friend offered him a position at the Alaska Spacecraft Tracking Station. He thought about it, sold his car and yacht and took his wife and daughter to Alaska.

Roger spent a year and a half in Alaska and bought another house. He got itchy feet again, took wife and daughter and took off around the world. He was lucky there was plenty of electronics work and interesting people where he stopped in Hawaii and Australia. He dropped off his wife and daughter in the Canaries and continued on back to Alaska. This completed the trip around the world. He was scheduled for two months in Alaska this time and sold his house there.

Lasers were something he had never worked with so when he was offered a job in the NASA laser network he jumped at it. This meant that he took his wife and daughter back to Maryland and bought another house. From a year there he went on a contract with the Royal Saudi Navy in Saudi Arabia. From there he back to Texas to help write a proposal on the shuttle contract. Then he went back to Europe to work with the European Space Agency.

Later he lost his daughter in a car accident in Texas while he was still working for the European Space Agency, quite work, and went back to the Canaries where he had a stroke that resulted in this book. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did.

It's in print! The life of Roger Lee. I meet Roger's daughter Monica while trying to learn Arabic in Saudia Arabia. I became great friends of the Lee's and ended up marrying Monica. Roger lead a very exciting life. He grew up as a dirt poor farmer in West Virginia during the depression. He got into the Electronics business early in life which opened the world up to him. He lived and worked all around the world from Alaska to Austrailia to Saudi Arabia. He spent many years helping the US Space program get started. After a long stay in the Cannary Islands working on the Apollo tracking station they decieded to maintain a home there while they continued there travels around the world. Roger speaks many laguages, English, German, Spanish, and Arabic to name a few. This is a true life adventure story! Can't wait to see the movie!

The stories are based in West Virginia. There are three stories and our children personally favored, "THE OCEAN VACATION" and "THE BOY WHO HATED HALLOWEEN."

If you want to introduce chapter books to young readers this is an excellent choice. It will not frustrate the early reader. The writing style is fun has good flow and the illustrations are sure to aid in holding the interest of any child.

As a mother of advanced twin 8 year old readers, a son and a daughter, both children eased through this title. They also truly enjoyed it. The book is reader friendly not only in story line and fun sketches but the print style and size are perfect for the 4-8 age group.

An adult will enjoy sharing these stories with any child. There is a classic feel and a sense of days gone by that the adult reader will appreciate.

Overall an excellent choice for a first chapter book pick!

My son is 5 1/2 and is beginning to have a desire to read "chapter" books but often finds them difficult to actually read. The "Little Ned" stories have been perfect for him! He reads them again and again, and really identifies with this little boy. The illustrations help him understand the story as he reads. I would encourage parents (and teachers) of early readers to purchase this book to encourage more advanced reading by allowing young children to have success while reading "chapter" books.

Little Ned Stories: Book One is the first of a four volume series of "chapter-picture" books designed, written and illustrated for young readers ages 4 to 8, in grades K-3. This easy-reader series is highly recommended for parents and teachers seeking to wean children away from picture books to the longer chapter books they are expected to have mastered by the third grade. Little Ned Stories: Book One features three separate stories centered on the realistic adventures of a "six going on seven" year old boy set in West Virginia in the early 1950s. One story has a central message with a life lesson to be learned (The Ocean Vacation), the other two stories are just for fun (No Soap and The Boy Who Hated Halloween). The 128 pages comprising Little Ned Stories: Book One are enhanced 45 b/w illustrations.

October 2, 2000

By Steve Forbes Editor-in-Chief

ROAD RAGE

Highway Robbery--by John Billheimer (St. Martin's Minotaur, $24.95). A wonderful blend of numerous, superbly developed--and often eccentric--characters; wry, politically incorrect humor; surprises and suspense, spiced with some of West Virginia's legendary skulduggery-encrusted politics makes for an always interesting murder mystery. Our California-based hero, Owen Allison, is suddenly called home to West Virginia by his mother. She suspects that a skeleton uncovered by a road construction crew is that of her late husband (and Owen's father), who supposedly drowned in a flood decades ago. Owen's father was that true West Virginia rarity--an honest highway commissioner. He and his scruples didn't sit well with plenty of pols and contractors. The mother's hunch about the body is wrong, but she's dead right about her husband's having been the victim of foul play. As Owen discovers, several people have skeletons they'd like to keep hidden in the closet.

This is Billheimer's second mystery. Read it, and you'll be looking for his first--and praying he turns out more like these.

Billheimers books are fun and suspenseful. His West Virginia settings make his books unique.

Highway Robbery is even better than Contrary Blues which was outstanding. Mixes life, mystery, humor, and romance with almost perfect pitch. Usually I am a little disappointed with the answer at the end of a mystery novel. This time I was not. The twists and turns were cleverly constructed. And the tale is witty and insightful with out the mystery.

Zoe Gergulin is a fugitive from her former job at the US Justice Dept. who is haunted by a guilty conscience. Although she's happily settled into her home in the wilds of West Virginia, she's always looking over her shoulder. She fears not only repercussions from investigations she did in her old job, but revenge from the brother of her best friend's husband, whom she had shot when he ambushed them.

When secretive Susan Rourke moves in nearby, then disappears, Zoe suspects she has been murdered. Handprints in dried bloodstains, a dented front door hanging by one hinge, a history of abuse by her husband Patrick -- all seem to confirm her suspicions. Then Patrick turns up dead. Zoe's investigation uncovers unsuspected secrets as this lively story progresses.

Labovitz definitely has a knack for telling a riveting tale, and for creating characters that are intriguing. We can hope that the author will entertain us with more stories like this. The main character, Zoe, is amusing and resourceful and readers will look forward to hearing more about her adventures.

I enjoyed the characters in the book and also the story really kept my interest. The one thing I did not like about the book was the counties that were mentioned are not counties of West Virginia. I am from WV. Charleston and Huntington were mentioned though which is accurage.

Ms. Trudy Labovitz is an exciting new writer who has written a winner with her recently published book, Ordinary Justice. Ordinary Justice focuses on some eccentric characters in the West Virginia mountain town of Ordinary. Ms. Labovitz weaves these characters into a tapestry of mystery and intrigue. Zoe Kergulin is a new and powerful woman on the mystery book scene, as is Trudy Labovitz. Ordinary Justice deserves a 5-star salute, and Ms. Labovitz deserves 5 stars for her first published book. We can only hope that Zoe will be back again soon, sleuthing her way through tangled evidence and broken lives.

DAUGHTER OF THE STARS is the story of Lacey Elliot, and her search for answers about a family she knows nothing about. Her mother Amelia is recovering from cancer surgery when she receives a letter that Lacey intercepts. The letter is from a relative, Vinnie, who is the sister of Amelia's deceased mother Ida. From this letter, Lacey's search for her roots begins. She travels to Harper's Ferry where Vinnie and other family members reside, and soon Lacey finds out the many secrets that her mother kept all those years.

The main secret is a possible murder, the unsolved murder or disappearance of Lacey's father Brad. No one seems to know what really happened. Was he really murdered? Or did he just disappear without a trace? His involvement with Amelia's sister Ardra was what caused the disappearance, but no one wants to talk about it.

Lacey gets deeper and deeper involved, befriending a family friend and historian, Ryan, whom she falls in love with. Between the two of them they unravel the secrets that lie at Harper's Ferry.

I enjoyed this story a lot, but had a big problem with all the characters. I didnt' like any of them, except for the outsider Ryan. All the characters were either too uncaring, or too soft (no backbone) and I couldn't sympathiZe with any one, including the main character. The storyline however is what kept me reading, because I really DID want to know who killed Brad!

This book is about a young woman named Lacey Elliot whose mother Amelia tells her nothing about her father or family any of the time while she is growing up. She is now twenty- nine years old and her mother just had surgery for cancer. They receive a letter in the mail that says it is very urgent that Amelia comes home and it is signed by her Aunt Vinnie. When Lacey reads this she is happy to discover she has other family members. Her mother is too weak to go home; which is Harpers Ferry, Virginia. So Lacey returns and gets to discover somethings she wanted to know and things she didn't. I really enjoyed this novel. It wasn't as bad as I thought it was. The author could have made it a little more challenging though by not making it so obvious. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes a little mystery.

A Review by Liz

Lacey Elliot has lived in Charlottesville, Virginia all her life. Her mother is recovering from breast cancer surgery and has never told Lacey anything about her Father. Lacey becomes curious about her family, which had only been, to her knowledge, her mother. Her mother receives and urgent letter that she can't handle so she asks Lacey to read it to her. To help out a mystery her mother isn't strong enough to solve, Lacey goes on a journey to her hometown she never knew of and starts finding interesting surprises about her family. Lacey has to deal throughout the story with being accused, protecting her mom and finding out the truth about what happened to her father.

This story is very hard to keep up with. I really liked the way the author ties in the history of Virginia(the civil war), her relatives of that time, with the present. When Lacey meets her Great-Great-Grandmother, she tells her about all her past relatives that had lived in the house is lives in now. She tells their stories and as the book progresses, their pasts tie into her present. Her great-great-grandmother is very controlling and always seems to only tell Lacey what she wants to and sometimes chooses to leave important information out. Lacey's relationship with her mother also makes it seem like no one wants to let her in on her family's past and history. Her mother says, "I'm only trying to protect you" but doesn't realize how important it is to lacey to know about her family. When Lacey leaves Charlottesville to seek for answers, she learns many things about her mother that she didn't know which made Lacey feel more alone, thinking she doesn't even know her own mother. This story has bits and pieces of the Civil War and provides you with a bit of history along the way with a wonderful mystery. You never want to put the book down because surprising things just keep happening to keep the story alive.

I would strongly recommend this book to anyone who would enjoy a good mystery and who would like to know a little about the history of Virginia. It reads pretty easy but it really makes you think.

After the wonderful Storming Heaven I was so excited to read this book, and then so disappointed. The plot is melodramatic, the characterizations cardboard.

I loved The Unquiet Earth... I loved the relationships and determination of the characters.... After I read this book, I wanted to read it again and again.... There is one thing I suggest you do before you read this one... I suggest you read Storming Heaven.... Storming Heaven is about Dillon's mother and father, and about Tony Angelelli's mother.... If you read this one first you can get their background.... But, Unquiet Earth is hands down my favorite book!! I highly recommend reading this book! The way it is written is really good to understand what each person is thinking during each situation.... You should definitely buy this book! I hope this persuaded you to buy this book...

This true story takes place in the area where I grew up; I was familiar with its happening. My father was involved in these events. Although I cannot say I enjoyed the book, ( because it was so realistic and tragic), I found it very ,very well written and so moving I lived with it for weeks. It is written entirely from the miners view, and is therefore one sided, but is nevertheless accurate in content. It is obvious that the author knew these people. I would recommend it to anyone interested in the history of this area. katydid

The author got carried away with many of his metaphors and descriptions . . such as comparing cow pies to paper. Has he never seen a cow pie? The ending made no sense. A grandchild of Emily's husband who only appears on the last page of the book sums up her life? It appears that the author was at a loss for an ending and tried to wrap it up with something external to both of the protagonists, but it was transparently bogus. The book was an easy read, but it was a disappointing read.

I was delighted by the language, the story, the characters, especially Emily, the female lead. I liked the atmosphere and the beautiful descriptions of the mountains. I would recommend this book to anyone who cares about good writing and a good story. Once I got passed the first 50 pages, I couldn't put it down.

How do you smell? might be a subtitle for this poetically tactile first novel by the grandson of a main character, not a man personally related to the wonderfully real and tragically human Appalachian maid Emily Jenkins, whose story this is. Her short life moves from one great loss to another, but she endures and does not exhibit, rather embodies, the fierce loyalty and spiritual beauty so much a part of her people. Like her West Virginia homeland Emily is partly wild, knowing how to survive and what is right, the laws of civilization notwithstanding. That civilization and its profit motive violate her family, her home, and her body, urging her to a vengeance that becomes her undoing. Vindicated from the grave, she speaks using Kessler as her vessel. Deeply symbolic and true to the Appalachian manner of speech and humor, Lick Creek is, at last, the great American novel.