"A fascinating narrative history..." West Virginia History (Journal); "Sean Duffy's book brings Wheeling's vibrant and diverse heritage to life again." -author George Fetherling

Davis Grubb said it best...

"It was, of course, the financial capital of Wheeling's old German and Anglo-Saxon families which built the great factories, but it was the hands and back, the blood and marrow of the people with the barbaric, unpronounceable names -- Serb names and Czech names-- Polish names -- Hungarian names -- who shoveled the valley full of iron and then gave it their spirit to make it steel.

...Here in the cramped, dun-colored mill homes below and above Wheeling, awaits the human resource from which she may tap the energy of fresh aspiration, new invention and put the novel resourcefulness of her past to the usages of survival. Here dwell the peoples of lasting metal whose steel is the alloy of the hundred cultures and tribes of a vanished Europe. Serb, Croat, Greek, Slovene, Czech, Slovak and Montenegrin and Pole. Their singing tongues lit and ring in myriad babble on the bus to Benwood: voices rise in ‘sprechtgesang’; ―words made music – frail as eggshell, speech as sweet as Bartok folksongs from arid Bohemian plain."

--Davis Grubb, "The Valley of the Ohio," published in Holiday magazine, July, 1960

Saturday, September 29, 2012

Signings!

At Words & Music with Alan Lestini, September 29.




At the Wheeling Artisan Center on September 22.


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