This Sweet and Bitter Earth

by Alexander Cordell Book 3 in the Second Welsh Trilogy series.

First published 1977

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3.7(28)

Toby Davies grows up amid the dangerous slate quarries of North Wales before moving south into the coalfield. Work shapes every stage of his life: quarry faces, pits and industrial settlements promise wages but expose labourers to injury, poverty and dependence on employers who control much of the local economy.
The later narrative reaches the Tonypandy disturbances of 1910, when a miners’ dispute in the Rhondda Valley brought mass picketing, police intervention and bitter argument over the use of state power. Cordell uses Toby’s life to bridge different Welsh industries and generations of labour conflict. The novel is both a coming-of-age story and a portrait of the long struggle over work and authority that accompanied industrial development.