Twilight in Hazard: An Appalachian Reckoning by Alan Maimon

 

Reviewed by Kristin

Twilight in Hazard caught my eye because in 1949 my dad was born in Hazard. Actually, he was born in one of the tiny communities along the Right Fork of Big Creek, about five miles southwest of Hazard. Times were tough then as the coal veins were being tapped out, and times remain tough in 2020s Hazard, as described by Alan Maimon.

Maimon had been a New York Times reporter based at the Berlin, Germany bureau. As he contemplated returning to the United States in 2000, he wasn’t committed to living in any particular geographic area and he decided that he wanted to go somewhere unlike any place he had previously lived. When a position at the Louisville Courier-Journal became available—specifically the Eastern Kentucky bureau based in Hazard—Maimon decided to give it a try.

At that point, the coal companies were looking for an easier way to get coal out of the ground. Sending workers or machines in to hack at veins of coal just wasn’t efficient, and many had turned to strip mining, or mountaintop removal. Of course, this resulted in fewer jobs and the dramatic change of scenery, not to mention water pollution and the occasional rockfall with devastating consequences.

Maimon did not just write another book about a poverty stricken area. He looks at the root causes of the problems of Eastern Kentucky, including the opioid pill mill doctors who were instrumental in medicating and addicting a higher percentage of the local population than the rest of the country. He also looks at local and national political candidates and office holders, noting which ones kept promises and which ones vanished in the wind. He looks at education (and the lack thereof), and how many Eastern Kentucky communities lose a large number of their young people to the outside world.

By the end of Maimon’s time in Hazard and Eastern Kentucky, he was also lamenting the failure of news outlets as papers shrunk in staff, column inches, and thickness. It is an alarming nationwide trend as online sources become increasingly polarized and readers/viewers choose their sources, seeing only what they want to see. Maimon describes the closing of regional news bureaus, physical papers only being printed three times a week, (sound familiar?) and the eventual demise of family owned and even corporate owned newspapers.

I really enjoyed this work of non-fiction. I have read other histories of Hazard and Perry County, but most of those focused on the earlier decades when I still had family living in the area. This is a more up to date work that examines the failures, successes, and hopes for the future for this area.