Song of the Earth

by Alexander Cordell Book 4 in the Mortymer Saga series.

First published 1969

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4.2(153)

Mostyn Evan and his family, miners turned bargees, work between the furnaces of Cyfarthfa and the Neath Valley in an industrial society built on coal, iron and dangerous transport. They face powerful coalmasters, conflict with Irish navvies, cholera and the coercive side of illegal union organisation, while family ties and courtship offer only uncertain protection from economic insecurity.
The third core novel of Cordell’s Welsh sequence broadens the saga beyond one household to the networks of labour that made the industrial valleys function. Barges, furnaces, mines and migrant workers connect communities that are divided by religion, origin and status but exposed to the same hazardous economy. Cordell’s emphasis on work, collective action and endurance makes the novel a social history of industrial Wales expressed through family drama.