Rating: 5 stars

Reviewed by Catherine Ekbert

Silas House embodies a sense of family and community, an appreciation
and a disdain for the simple life and forgiveness and tolerance of
others in his latest book, The Coal Tattoo.

It is an intricate tale of two sisters, Easter and Anneth Sizemore,

raised under the watchful caring eye of their grandmothers, Vine and
Serena after the sudden tragic death of their mother. But the Lords
calls them home, first Vine and then Serena, leaving the girls to
their own devices.

Easter gives up her scholarship to Berea College and her dreams to
become a teacher to care for Anneth, who is still a minor and quite
the handful. Easter is a woman of faith; a devout Pentecostal who
would never dream of straying from the righteous path to salvation for
fear the fires of hell would rise up and claim her.

Anneth rebukes her family's rigid faith and enjoys the life of a
sinner. But to Easter's dismay, her sister embraces the darker side of
drinking, smoking and men, and makes no apologies for her reckless
behavior.

But Easter does stray from the church after she falls in love and
marries El. Together they get their fill of bars and immorality until
Easter's guilt consumes her and she finds herself standing at the
church altar asking for forgiveness for her wickedness. Her request
comes too late as she will pay the ultimate price years later.

Anneth never asks for forgiveness even after she elopes with Matthew,
a promising country and western singer, and runs off to Nashville.
Some life's teaching are etched in stone as Anneth insists on a
Pentecostal preacher to perform the wedding ceremony. Like a
wildflower in a clay pot, Anneth struggles against the concrete and
the high rises of Nashville and seeks solace down by the river – a
river whose waters had passed through her own small town before
washing over the banks of Tennessee.

The sisters, who seem like water and fire on the exterior, are
undistinguishable on the inside, where their Grandmothers molded them
with strength to overcome even the most devastating of losses, to love
as if it is their last day on earth, and the taught them of
forgiveness and tolerance. These gifts caused their souls to mesh as one.

Silas House brings The Coal Tattoo to life against the backdrop of the
beautiful and magical Appalachian Mountains and the tyranny of the
coal mining companies whose decades of treachery and abuse of the
powerless local community is about to come to an end. It encompasses
all the elements for a classic and his slow, sensuous style will take
your breath away. Well done Silas House.

Copyright 2005 Midwest Book Reviews, All Rights Reserved.