A realistic but fond memoir of a girlhood lived in a coal camp, or “patch” in southwestern Pennsylvania during the Great Depression of the 1930s, Icon of Spring is also a coming-of-age story.  It begins in 1932 when the narrator, the child of Carpatho-Rusyn immigrant parents, is seven years old.  Her father is a miner, and work is scarce as the grip of the depression tightens.  The jars of canned food on the storeroom shelf are dwindling, and the family fears eviction from their small company-owned house.

Icon of Spring recounts her childhood during the next seven years, as she grows to adolescence in a world that is protective within her family but shares the violence of the coal region.  She is witness to accidental death in the mines, the murder of a coal and iron policeman, the muted struggle to unionize, and the itinerant beggars who appear at the back door.

Yet this is far from a grim book, for we see life in the patch through the eyes of the child.  Warmed by the closeness she feels toward her parents, especially her mother, and her nine brothers and sisters, she knows the joy of one sister’s wedding and raucous reception, the mysterious Easter ritual of the Eastern Orthodox Liturgy, the fun of attending a medicine show, and the almost incandescent hope placed in the new president, Franklin D. Roosevelt.  Her life is peopled by traveling peddlers, the priest of her church, a union organizer, and the town bachelors: Big John, Peg Leg Pete, and Shorty Steve.

Icon of Spring evokes life in a depression coal patch from a female perspective.  A splendid memoir of childhood told with accuracy and warmth which is also rich in social history, it will appeal to general readers as well as students.

An Intimate Illustrated Tour of America’s Most Iconic Colonial City

From its beginning as a haven for English Quakers in the colony William Penn founded in 1681, the city of Philadelphia prospered, becoming a leading port in the English Atlantic World and a center of American culture and politics. Grounded in enlightenment ideals, Philadelphia attracted diverse settlers from the Old and New Worlds. By the 1760s, a cash-strapped England set its sights on taxing the American colonies to pay its debts. Philadelphia assumed roles as a center of revolutionary protests, a meeting place for colonial delegates to decide on independence and a new form of government, and, finally, the first capital of the United States of America.

Richly illustrated with both new photography and an amazing array of early American art drawn from the collections of some of America’s leading museums and archives, Independence: A Guide to Historic Philadelphia reveals the stories of the persons who experienced the early years of the new nation in America’s first capital. Based on meticulous research, Independence walks its readers through the lives of the residents and visitors of the revolutionary city, and through the streets and buildings that they knew. Famous names are here: Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, Washington. But Independence also focuses on the fascinating stories of less famous American founders. Enslaved and free, women and men, rich and poor, patriot and Tory, shaped Philadelphia’s and America’s experience in the revolutionary era, and all have their say here. In addition, this guide tells the stories of the iconic buildings and streets where America was founded. The book explores the dozens of buildings that make up Independence National Historical Park and connects these with neighboring sites that are also intimately associated with the story of America’s birth.

Independence will enrich the experience of those who travel to these historic sites, as well as offer a vivid and fascinating story for the general reader.

Irish Presbyterians and the Shaping of Western Pennsylvania, 1770–1830 is a historical study examining the religious culture of Irish immigrants in the early years of America. Despite fractious relations among competing sects, many immigrants shared a vision of a renewed Ireland in which their versions of Presbyterianism could flourish free from the domination of landlords and established church. In the process, they created the institutional foundations for western Pennsylvanian Presbyterian churches.

Rural Presbyterian Irish church elders emphasized community and ethnoreligious group solidarity in supervising congregants’ morality. Improved transportation and the greater reach of the market eliminated near-subsistence local economies and hastened the demise of religious traditions brought from Ireland. Gilmore contends that ritual and daily religious practice, as understood and carried out by migrant generations, were abandoned or altered by American-born generations in the context of major economic change.