M. C. Higgins, the Great

As a slag heap, the result of strip mining, creeps closer to his house in the Ohio hills, fifteen-year-old M. C. is torn between trying to get his family away and fighting for the home they love. Mayo Cornelius Higgins sits on his gleaming, forty-foot steel pole towering over his home on Sarah's Mountain. Stretched before him are rolling hills and shady valleys. But behind him lie the wounds of strip mining, inclding a moutain of rubble that may one day fall and bury his home. M.C. dreams of escape for himself and his family. And, one day atop his pole, he thinks he sees it-two strangers are making their way toward Sarah's Mountain. One has the ability to make M.C.'s mother famous. And the other has a freedom that M.C. has never even considered. This is one of those rare books which draws the reader in with the first paragraph and keeps him or her turning the pages until the end.