Black Diamonds

A lyrical literary memoir of Scranton, Pennsylvania, Black Diamonds uncovers layers of history about the place that fueled the nation for over a century. As a girl in the 1960s, Catherine Young lived amid mountains of waste coal above ground and mine fires beneath her feet while longing for the green, lovely scene portrayed in The Lackawanna Valley, George Inness’s 1855 painting.

She shows readers the valley through a child’s eyes, passing through the immigrant kitchens, relief lines, and soot-stained alleys of a collapsing city—and family love amid lives cut short by coal.