Review of 40 Patchtown: A Novel
by Karen Weyant
Damian Dressick | Bottom Dog Press | 2020
[T]his story draws readers into a world where miners struggle in poverty, scrounging to make meals with meager food supplies while living in squalor.
40 Patchtown: a Novel is now available at
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Damian Dressick opens up 40 Patchtown: a Novel with a brutal ambush: a group of boys attack four “Scabs” or replacement mine workers in a violent scuffle that leaves one of the workers dead, his body floating in a drainage ditch. And so sets the tone of Dressick’s first novel, 40 Patchtown, a story that takes the reader into the setting of the 1922 Coal Miner’s Strike of Windber, Pennsylvania.
History tells us that the miners went on strike to gain union recognition so that they could preserve their fair pay rates. Indeed, Pennsylvania’s coal mining past is filled with strikes and disasters, but literature often romanticizes the true nature of these painful hardships and tragedies.
But Dressick’s novel does not fall into this trap.
Narrated by young Chet Pistakowski, this story draws readers into a world where miners struggle in poverty, scrounging to make meals with meager food supplies while living in squalor. Through the eyes of Chet, we see the gritty landscape, feel the ache of young bones, and smell a world smothered in sulfur smoke.
After more violence leaves his family totally desolate, Chet must find away to care for those he loves. Indeed, some may view this novel as a coming-of-age story as Chet is forced to make difficult choices in order to save his family, and in many ways, himself.
The author of two poetry chapbooks, Karen J. Weyant’s essays and poems have been published in BioStories, Chautauqua, Copper Nickel, Crab Creek Review, Crab Orchard Review, Harpur Palate, Fourth River, Lake Effect, Rattle, Spillway, and Whiskey Island. She lives in Warren, Pennsylvania, but teaches across the state line at Jamestown Community College in Jamestown, New York.
