Michael Cash is a hewer – he descends into the subterranean shafts and tunnels of the Black Country to swing a pickaxe at the seams of coal that run there. If a more perilous occupation exists in England in the 1870s, then it perhaps belongs only to the often-orphaned children who are paid a pittance to drag the wagons that Michael and his colleagues fill, and whipped if they stop to scratch the sores made by the chains that bind them.
Here, subterranean stalls propped up by planks can collapse instantly, killing those who made them, and noxious gases permeate. In a good week, Michael earns enough to buy leeks and potatoes with which his new wife can make broth to feed the family, but not enough to pay for his six-year-old son Luke’s schooling. A bony roach or two lifted from a dreary pond supplements their diet. Like so many miners, Michael’s main motivation is preventing his son from having to follow him down into the Dante-esque circles of hell that Daniel Wiles brilliantly evokes in this confident and moving debut.
