[Ivan Zoschenko] has his head in this same thick book when Gertie explodes in a terrifying conflagration, killing his father and dozens of other men. From that moment on, "Coal Run" burrows into Ivan's life retrospectively, his pent-up emotions and lifelong regrets unraveling over a period of six days through a series of bleak and continuously touching reminiscences. Author [Tawni O'Dell] chips away at Ivan's adult struggles with isolation and alcoholism to reveal the childhood traumas that caused them: his father's death; the Vietnam-era drafting of his beloved neighbor; the tragic arc of his once-promising football career.

For the luckiest inhabitants of Coal Run, redemption and self- reckoning aren't far off. Even Ivan, whose ghosts loom over him like the rusty machinery of the abandoned mine shafts, finds moments of solace in his relationship with his mother and his former beauty- queen sister and her three precocious children. When the old, entrenched patterns start cracking like dried-up earth, Ivan knows that something in him has changed. And if things can't get worse, it must be a change for the better.

All the obsessive analysis is kept tolerable by [Donna] and Esther's autodidactic musings and breathless love for the literary. Although a series of very short, satisfying stories round out [Gwendoline Riley]'s book, her novella, "Sick Notes," looms largest. Esther's black humor, tempered by Donna's friendly devotion, keep things from getting too narcissistic, even when Esther's revolving door of self- love and self-pity proves incapacitating.