by Oline H. Cogdill
Many authors weave real events into their novels, making their fiction that much stronger, and even meaningful.
And the best authors use real events to complement their plot, careful not to go so overboard in reporting the facts that they lose sight of the novel.
Julia Keller is one of those authors who knows how to infuse reality into a gripping novel.
Keller’s latest novel Last Ragged Breath is a compelling story and the fact that real events are woven into the plot makes the story that much more intriguing. (Julia Keller is profiled in the latest issue of Mystery Scene magazine; Fall 2015 issue, No. 141.)
On February 26, 1972, the Buffalo Creek flood disaster occurred when the Pittston Coal Company's coal slurry impoundment dam, which was located on a hillside in Logan County, West Virginia, burst. Four days before, the dam had been declared “satisfactory” by a federal mine inspector.
The area was decimated.
The flood unleashed about 132,000,000 gallons of black waste water, which crested more than 30 feet high over 16 coal towns along Buffalo Creek Hollow.
Of the 5,000 people living in the area, 125 were killed, 1,121 were injured, and more than 4,000 were left homeless. The flood destroyed 507 houses, 44 mobile homes, and about 30 businesses.
The settlement to the families was small as Pittston Coal called the accident “an Act of God” in its legal filings.
Those are the facts.
And while Keller doesn’t change the facts, she makes us see the human faces that suffered because of that flood in Last Ragged Breath, the fourth in her series about prosecutor Bell Elkins.
“The financial settlement was meager and most [residents] were left living in trailers,” said Keller in the Mystery Scene interview.
Last Ragged Breath “is my most overtly political novel—not in terms of Republican or Democratic—but in terms of social justice and what we expect of our elected officials and of corporations and their responsibilities to the community,” said Keller.
“The novel also gave me a chance to explore West Virginia history and to tie that history to the present day.”
Last Ragged Breath gives Keller a chance to reflect on social justice.
“Buffalo Creek was such an egregious case of corporation malfeasance. It’s the same kind of thing we still deal with today when we talk about social justice and the responsibilities of corporations to the communities in which they are set. Buffalo Creek was a perfect poster incident of that,” said Keller, who is working on her fifth novel in the series.
