The Scapegoat by Mary Lee Settle
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is probably the best of the Beulah Quintet in terms of unity and approach, telling the story of one of the heirs to Beulah who grew rich on coal, a quiet and ineffectual man who married sensibly, managed his coal mine with some humanity, but lost himself to the larger coal interests who entered West Virginia during the era of the robber baron capitalists. Mother Jones features in the book, a legendary figure among community organizers. The incident at the center of the book, a mine strike that the coal bosses must crush, is offered in counterpoint with the more private side of the book – deft, exact portraits of the women who are the central characters, much richer and more tangible than the men. Settle has a fine eye on these people and their nuances of attitude and voice are clear as they can be. This is a period of history and a place that I have read little about, and the novel on the whole is satisfying. But I found myself standing outside the story and carping at it nevertheless. The novel constantly pushed me out of immersion by constant shifts in point of view; I am to follow everyone’s story equally, it seems, even though not all the loci of character are equally interesting. The technique here is something between Faulkner and Woolf. It is not the method of the novel that falters for me; it is the fact that the method really exposes the triviality of the people at the center of the story. Settle is not as successful as Woolf at making the objects of everyday appear luminous and singular. And the fact that we move so readily from head to head in the story made me critique each character again and again as though I were being introduced to them over and over again. The story never could build up much momentum. The novel survives its weaknesses, though, and resonates with the pathos of these people and their struggle. The fine writing carries it.