Under a Cloudless Sky by Chris Fabry

Esau is a man in the Bible who has become synonymous with disregard for what is sacred in favor of immediate gratification. Thus people in coal mining communities used the term “Esau script” to describe the money that women in coal camps received when desperation forced them to sell their bodies at the company store, often when faced with the eviction of their remaining families after their husbands had been killed in mine accidents. Those who researched and preserved the Whipple Company Store in Fayette County, West Virginia, were the first known to have openly revealed this terrible truth of life in some company mining towns and to preserve this truth in a historical building. I believe that when I was the editor of Appalachian Heritage, I was the first to print an article that openly dealt with this terrible practice of coal operators. It was written by Wes Harris and Mike Kline. Now there is a novel that I believe is the first to openly write of Esau script. The fictional company s