The Coal Cracker

Pat Devlin, a quasi-fictional character is developed in an accurate historical setting, to record for posterity the unique times and lives of this great, multi-cultured people in his home town of Mt. Carmel, Pa. Pat was a true, tobacco chewing, coal cracker, deeply in love with his childhood sweetheart and born with an insatiable curiosity and desire to play detective. But it is more than that. The Coal Cracker is about the scrupulous religious fervor of a Catholic education, and about the proud but strange camaraderie of its citizens that exist to this day. It is a story of puppy love, deceit and rejection; innocent times racked with violence; poverty without pity; prejudice overcome; the carnage of war and the primitive practice of medicine in the early fifties. Finally, it is a success story with a literally, incredible happy ending.