Andrew Krivak

In 1929, Ondro Prach, the 13-year-old son of Slovak immigrants in Pennsylvania coal country, begins a new job as mule boy. He knows the danger—his father died in the mines—but he is proud of his position handling the animal that hauls cartloads of coal from shafts deep in the earth to the surface.

A cautionary tale of human fragility, of love and loss, The Bear is a stunning tribute to the beauty of nature's dominion....

A stirring tale of brotherhood, coming-of-age, and survival, that was inspired by the author’s own family history....

Rooted in the small mountain town of Dardan, Pennsylvania, where patriarch Jozef Vinich settled after surviving World War I, Like the Appearance of Horses immerses us in the intimate lives of a family whose fierce bonds have been shaped by the great conflicts of the past century....