Author Description

About the Book Men with Black Faces chronicles the lives of coal miners, their difficult lives, and family struggles from 1880 through the Great Depression. As you learn the true stories of everyday life in the mining camps, the disaster and death, the great love they had for each other, and their dreams and ambitions, you will take away a better understanding of what life was really like in these communities and compare your life today with how it was at the dawn of the coal industry. About the Author Albert J. Thomas II is a graduate of Appalachian State University in North Carolina and received a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction from St. Vincent College in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. He grew up in a coal mining camp and spent a tour in Vietnam. He is an artist, is married to Kiti Roic from Croatia, and has two children. He decided to write this book to keep the coal miner’s legacy alive through all the backlash they receive from the green energy advocates. His life growing up in the coal mining patch of Filbert greatly assisted him in understanding his grandfather’s voice in this book.