What readers think of The Hollow Ground, plus links to write your own review.

Hollow Ground is impressed, moving and fill with tales of dark secrets that impacts a mining family in Pennsylvania in the 1960's.Brigid Howley the narrator tells of curses, old tales on the family that she believes is bring misfortunes to her family. Brigid wants to escape, she is scare, limited and lonely in her despairs to understand the past and how it affects her family and the people around her. I would recommend everyone to read it.

The Hollow Ground is an engrossing tale of a mining family in 1960s Pennsylvania. The narrator is young Brigid Howley. Her family feels that they have been cursed and blame all their misfortunes on it. Brigid's parents have trouble keeping jobs and move in with her grandparents. The family keeps secrets about what happened in the past and this creates much pain and suffering. Brigida lives in fear of everyone in the small town and she feels isolated and unloved. I enjoyed this book and would recommend it. The novel showed how burying secrets can rip a family apart.

A very strong debut set in the 1960's in Pennsylvania coal country.
Brigid Hawley is eleven yrs old, a girl that has had to grow up fast, due to the impoverished circumstances of her parents and their dysfunctional lives. When the underground fires consume her aunt's house where her family was living they move into the house of her grandmother and grandfather. Her mother does not get along with the grandmother and her father is far from the family favorite. It is here that things rapidly disintegrate.

The family curse, which they blame on all misfortune, the raging fires and nighttime visits by a man who monitors the air in their house, a mine accident, black lung disease and the total let down of the government and its infernal delays and paperwork. Secrets revealed in both her father's and mothers lives, send things spiraling and causing Brigid to make adjustments in her thinking time and time again.

Brigid is unaccountably the star of this novel, her anguish, wanting to find a home, to keep her parents together are all so heartfelt. I really felt for this young lady. She is wise beyond her years and eventually comes to term with the many lessons she has to learn.

""That's what wanting does, I guess. It takes away everything, even
the pleasure of getting the thing you wanted in the first place."

A hard lesson for a young girl to have to learn.

Set against the Anthracite Coal Region of Pennsylvania, Hollow Ground explores relationships between and among multigenerational family members, as told through the lens of the daughter, Brigid. She has problems finding a sense of permanence and home.

Author Natalie Harnett introduces us to life in the coal region and the family, then turns and twists the plot along the way, revealing unpredictable long kept family
secrets.

Despite the unusual dark setting and dysfunctional family relationships, I really enjoyed a fast-paced read, full of complex characters and an attention-grabbing plot.

I was intrigued by the setting of this novel--a city on top of a coal mine fire--but from the first few lines of The Hollow Ground, I was captivated by the young narrator's voice. She's a clever girl who is learning about the troubles in her family while trying to discover who she is. Harnett tells a not-unusual coming-of-age story cleverly by allowing the terrain, the gaping holes and fire slowly consuming the town, to parallel the story-line. Harnett tells a layered story with a series of vivid characters. Well worth the time for readers who enjoy character driven fiction.

I liked this book even though it took a while to get into it. The characters are well written though they made me angry at their ignorance and lack of compassion. It was interesting to see how names showed Brigid's emotions: those she loved had nicer sounding names like "Daddy" and "Auntie" while those less kindly had short hard names like "Ma" and "Gram". You could feel their character by how Brigid identified them. The history was vivid and the story of a young girl's strength reminded me of the characters in "The Orphan Train".

Really enjoyed this novel. I was drawn into story immediately. I actually cared about characters so much that I looked up more information about the coal mine fires. I would read this author again. A true test is reading without being distracted by husband channel surfing. This novel passed. Thank you BookBrowse

Auntie tells Brigid, the narrator of this novel, the tale of the "Great Forgetting" and the people of the pillaged town who would never know joy. Brigid loved the retelling of this story only to find that she and her family were doomed to live in just that place.

Natalie S. Harnett writes a novel set in a desperate area of the anthracite coal region of Pennsylvania. Over generations families tried to eke out a living from dangerous mines run by ruthless owners. Brigid's family was one of them. They were cursed just be being poor and without an easy escape from the only fire in their lives. The coal mines burned and consumed the houses they lived in and the very air they breathed.