Online Store

Baseball player and manager Hugh Ambrose Jennings was the kind of colorful personality who inspired nicknames. Sportswriters called him “Ee-yah” for his famous coaching box cry and “Hustling Hughey” for his style of play. But to the nearly 100 other men from northeast Pennsylvania who followed Jennings from the coal mines to the major leagues, he was known as “Big Daddy,” not for his physical stature but for his iconic status to men desperate to escape the mines. The son of an immigrant coal miner from Pittston, Pennsylvania, Jennings himself became a miner at the ripe old age of 11 or 12. He eventually became a mule driver, earning $1.10 per day and dreaming of getting $5 per day for playing baseball on Saturday afternoons. From the rough-and-tumble world of semi-pro baseball to the major leagues, Jennings was driven to succeed and fearless in his pursuit of his dream. He joined the Baltimore Orioles in 1894 and went on to become manager of the Detroit Tigers during Ty Cobb’s heyday. Jennings’ story is emblematic of how the national pastime and the American dream came together for a generation of ballplayers in the early 20th century.

With Coal Region Hoodoo, Maxim W. Furek continues his exploration of high strangeness inside the Pennsylvania wormhole that gave birth to The Night of the Living Dead, The Blob, and The Philadelphia Experiment. His journey takes us beyond the netherworlds of Centralia, Sheppton, Chestnut Ridge, and The Pennhurst Asylum. It looks into the eyes of demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren and the twisted souls of serial killer Gary Heidnik and con artist Richard Sharpe Shaver while exploring the preternatural secrets of Bigfoot, cryptids, Kecksburg, The Smurl Haunting, Pennsylvania Dutch Powwowing, and Roman Catholic Mysticism.

Tell Me About My Father: Wasyl’s Story by Jayne M. Booth.  Book 2 of the Rocked in the Cradle of Coal series.  105 pages.   “Rocked in The Cradle of Coal Series: Children of the Pennsylvania Coal Mines Northeastern Pennsylvania was the cradle of the coal industry in the early 1900s.  Immigrants escaping poverty and hunger in Poland, Hungary, Ukraine, and other countries were eagerly recruited by the anthracite mine barons to provide cheap labor in exchange for the promise of a better life in North America.  Upon arriving in their new country, immigrants soon discovered that the streets were not made of gold.  Because they were part of the vast low-skilled labor force and did not speak English well (although they may have spoken three or four other languages), they faced prejudice and were ridiculed with ethnic slurs. With Limited Resources and a language barrier that separated them from the mainstream culture, these proud immigrants found strength in ethnic neighborhoods, societies, and their faith,  They preserved with a strong work ethic, self-respect, and love for each other,  Rocked in the Cradle of Coal stories are based on fact although not politically correct by today’s standards.  The Situations and conversation are purely a product of oral tradition and the author’s imagination… but they could have happened in any immigrant home at the time. Book 2 Tell Me About My Father: Wasyl’s Story In 1917 the United States is recovering from the costly first World War. Inflation hits hard, especially in the coal regions of Northeastern Pennslyvania. Families are forced to make difficult decisions. What groceries are optional? Does mama really need cream in her coffee? Probably not. Is a nine-year-old boy too young to quit school and work full-time in the mines? Maybe…..maybe not.  This is Wasyl’s dilemma. He sees his widowed mother struggling to buy food and pay bills. He wants to get a job and help her and his sisters, but Mama insists that he not work in the mines like so many other boys his age are doing. He wishes he had a father to guide him through the harsh realities of growing up in coal country, but Wasyl’s father is a big secret no one ever discusses. He has so many questions. There is so much he doesn’t understand. Is it kinder to keep secrets, or to deal with them honestly and openly even if they hurt? Wasyl is about to find out.