Strange as this Weather Has Been

American writer and essayist Ann Pancake’s debut novel Strange as This Weather Has Been is a work of fiction that blends elements of Pancake’s own upbringing in Appalachia to tell the tale of a present-day coal mining family. Published in 2007, this is a character-driven novel with a ticking clock. Set amid the turmoil of West Virginia, Pancake’s characters are thrust into one of the most dangerous regions of the country, where strip mining has devastated the landscape and destroyed the ecosystem.

The narrative focuses primarily on Lace See and her daughter, Bantella, using multiple perspectives to tell the family’s struggle of living in the West Virginia hollows. The story is told from four perspectives—Lace as well as three of her four children, Bant, Corey, and Dane. Lace and Bant, who are devoted to the land, tell their stories in the first person. The points of view of Corey and Dane, who do not share the same devotion, are told in the third person.

The novel begins with Lace looking back at why she was attracted to her now-husband Jimmy Make and how she got pregnant. Despite Lace’s youthful eagerness to leave her hometown, she is perpetually torn between staying and going. It is this dichotomy of the connection between person and place that Pancake spends much of the novel’s pages exploring. Lace and her family struggle to maintain an identity in a landscape where devastation is an inevitability.

While most of Lace’s chapters flash back to her past and her troubles Jimmy, the chapters told from Bant, Dane, and Corey’s perspectives are interconnected and linear. Strip mining and the ensuing environmental devastation are the central threads that connect each chapter, yet each person’s perspective offers a different vantage point from which to view the destruction.

Fifteen-year-old Bant’s chapters serve as a coming of age story set against the backdrop of family tensions and environmental threats. Bant becomes interested in an older, out-of-town boy who is working for the very company that is responsible for destroying her family’s land. As a result, she feels divided by her attraction to the boy and loyalty to her family and home.

Twelve-year-old Dane’s chapters reveal a quiet undertone of fear and anxiety. Dane can’t stop thinking about the end of the world because he constantly hears stories about floods, destruction, and the End Times in the Bible. Since he feels the persistent threat of death at every turn—both the physical death associated with the floods and the emotional death of his family—he is unsure of himself as well as his future.

Ten-year-old Corey’s chapters reveal a naiveté and ignorance that comes from being young and uneducated. While Corey experiences the same flooding, mine blasting, and destruction of land that his family does, unlike them, he sees it all as an adventure. His main hobbies in life are rummaging through the flooded creeks for metal treasures that have been washed up from neighboring yards, riding his bike along the rutted dirt paths carved by mining machinery, and scheming ways to ride his neighbor’s four-wheeler.  

The two central conflicts throughout the novel are Lace and Jimmy’s unhealthy marriage and the devastating floods that are occurring because of the strip mining happening on the nearby mountains. While Lace and Jimmy have many issues in their marriage, their main source of contention is their disagreement about the flooding. Lace wants to stand up to the coal companies and demand that they implement safer mining practices. However, Jimmy wants to move his family away from West Virginia; he thinks that the coal companies are too powerful and influential to be persuaded. While Lace and Jimmy’s marriage is at stake, their arguments also dramatize a larger commentary about strip mining in West Virginia. That is, there is no neutrality or unity: People are either vehemently for mining because it provides an income to an otherwise desperately impoverished region, or they are adamantly against it because the effects of the mining are destroying the land, animal habitats, and homes.

Pancake is from a mining town in West Virginia, and her template for Lace, Jimmy, and their kids is taken from accounts of real people she interviewed while researching the novel. While the novel is a telling dissection of the human condition in the face of natural disaster, it is also a rallying cry about the consequences of irresponsible mountaintop removal strip mining (MTR). Pancake pleads her case by showing the reader, firsthand, the damage MTR does to a community, such as completely defacing the skyline and doing irreparable harm to the ecosystem. While Strange as This Weather Has Been does not tackle the issue directly, it does paint a vivid picture of the effects of strip mining on the people themselves.