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A Coal Miner's Bride: The Diary of Anetka Kaminska
Susan Campbell Bartoletti
Historical Fiction (Series)
Ages 12 and up
Scholastic, 2000, 0-439-05386-2
Anetka is content living in her Polish village with her Grandmother and is in no hurry to join her father in America. He has made arrangements for her to marry a man there and though she knows that it is expected of her to comply by her father's wishes she cannot seem to find the will to be enthusiastic about the prospect. Then something dreadful happens and Anetka is catapulted into a sudden and hurried departure from her home, her beloved grandmother, and her country. With her travels a Russian soldier who saved her at a time of crisis and who is now also on the run. Together Anetka and Leon travel to Lattimer, Pennsylvania. The town is in the heart of coal country and it is a bleak place, so unlike the country that Anetka left behind.
Soon Anetka is reunited with her father "Tata." Sooner still she is married to Josef and she finds to her shock that she is now the mother of three small girls. No one told her about the children but she is a motherly young woman and she soon grows to love Violet, Rose, and Lily. The same cannot be said for Josef who cannot seem to stop loving his first wife and who does not seem to be willing to give Anetka a chance.
It is a hard life being a miner's wife and Anetka wonders if this is to be her lot in life, to be married to a man who does not love her, in a place that is dirty, surrounded by hardship and by people who are treated badly by the mine owners. There is also much death for mine accidents happen frequently. Then many things start to happen at once and Anetka's life makes another dramatic change.
It is hard to imagine leaving one's home to marry someone whom one has never met but this was a common practice in the late 1800's and early 1900's. Many young women came to America and Canada for the single purpose of marrying. This book helps us understand and appreciate the courage of the young women who did this and the author tells a moving and sympathetic story about a strong willed and likeable young woman whom we can all admire.
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