Playing St. Barbara
Marian Szczepanski, 2013
High Hill Press
385 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781606530771
Summary
In the Depression-era coal patch known as The Hive, miner’s wife Clare Sweeney keeps secrets to survive. Stripped of her real name, she hides her friendship with a town pariah, haunting guilt around the deaths of her three infant sons, and determination never to bear another. She defies her abusive husband and the town’s rigid caste system to ensure a better future for her daughters, who harbor secrets of their own.
Deirdre conceals her attraction to a member of the despised Company police. Katie withholds her plans for a college education—and the convent—from her high school sweetheart. And Norah suppresses the cause of her mother’s frequent miscarriages, the devastating memory of one brother’s death, and her love for a married man.
Each is cast as St. Barbara in the town’s annual pageant, but scandal and tragedy intervene, allowing just one to play the coveted role. In turn, they depart from The Hive, leaving Clare to endure her difficult marriage—till a mine explosion rocks the town. Forced to confront the ghosts of her past, she faces a life-changing choice. Her decision will test her capacity to forgive and challenge her to begin a courageous journey to self-redemption. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Raised—Greensburg, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Notre Dame; M.F.A, Warren Wilson College
• Awards—Clackamas Literary Review Award (Emerging Writer in Fiction); Houston Press
Club Magazine Feature Prize
• Currently—lives in Houston, Texas
The granddaughter of immigrant coal miners, Marian Szczepanski grew up in southwestern Pennsylvania and lived as a young child in the Jamison Coal Company house where her mother and aunts were raised.
She holds an MFA in fiction from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Her short fiction has appeared in Clackamas Literary Review and won the magazine's Peter and Jean de Maine Award for an Emerging Writer. A Houston Press Club award recipient for magazine feature writing, Szczepanski also has published articles in University of Houston’s Collegium magazine and Houston Woman Magazine. Playing St. Barbara is her first novel. (From the author.)
Visit the author's webpage.
Follow Marian on Facebook.
Book Reviews
Playing St. Barbara by Marian Szczepanski is a great book, a stunning debut novel that shimmers with unforgettable characters while casting necessary light on a dark chapter in American history. Drawn to the social and political history of coal mining in southwestern Pennsylvania because of her personal connection (her grandparents were immigrant miners), Szczepanski focuses on the lives of the mothers, daughters, and wives of coal miners. Telling their stories, she illuminates the terrible burdens forced on coal mining families and the immense spirit required to endure, much less thrive, in such an environment...Szczepanski made a believer out of me—I believe in the possibility of light and grace, even in the darkest of times, and I am more enthralled than ever by the powerful stories of women: sisters, mothers, daughters, and friends.
Nina Sankovitch - Huffington Post
Playing St. Barbara is a beautifully written piece of historical fiction set in a 1930s Pennsylvania mining town...Szczepanski brilliantly weaves in the legend of St. Barbara, patroness of miners, through an annual town pageant. Her four main characters' lives also eerily mirror the seventh-century legend...Themes of poverty, alcoholism, women's liberation, family loyalty, heritage, sacrifice, race and more play out, while each woman narrates her own story of living in the unsettled Great Depression era...Though this story takes place 80 years ago, some of the same themes haunt our news headlines today. Book clubs across the country can read Playing St. Barbara and discuss the historical novel on a wider scale, comparing and contrasting to our world today, while using these four strong female characters to give us hope in a world that is still often confused.
Margo L. Dill - The News-Gazette
Clare and each of her daughters are the little people caught up in the sweep of history, but Szczepanski brings their fictional voices to a larger audience.... Playing St. Barbara equally pays tribute to Szczepanski's grandmothers and all the women who call a hotline hoping for a little hope of their own.
Tarra Gaines - Culture Map Houston
Discussion Questions
1. What are Clare’s secrets? What does she gain by keeping them? What does she lose?
2. How would you describe the caste system in The Hive? In what ways is it controlled by the Company? The Klan? How do Clare and her daughters attempt to subvert this system? Do they succeed? If so, at what cost?
3. What is the Company’s motivation to initiate the St. Barbara Festival? Why does every girl in The Hive—other than Norah—want to play St. Barbara?
4. What role does religion play in the characters’ lives? Is it a comfort or constraint? Do you agree with Clare’s belief that she is damned?
5. Fin is both idolized and feared in The Hive. How would you describe his character? Do you ever sympathize with him?
6. Would you describe Clare as a victim? What about her daughters?
7. What attracts Deirdre to Billy? How does Clare overcome her hatred of Cossacks to endorse the match?
8. Katie changes her mind twice about entering the convent. Should she have followed through with her original plan?
9. Why does Mary Clare reject Paul? Do you think she made the right decision?
10. Was your initial response to the mine explosion similar to or different from Clare’s and Norah’s?
11. How does St. Barbara’s story mirror the lives of Clare and her daughters?
12. How do different languages and customs affect women’s relationships in The Hive?
13. Why does Clare wait so long to leave Fin? Do you believe the reason she gives in Chapter 4—“How could a worn-out woman with no skills beyond housework possibly do otherwise?”—or is there a deeper reason?
14. What will Clare’s life be like in Pittsburgh? Do you think she’ll remarry? Will she ever revisit The Hive?
(Questions courtesy of the author.)