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NEWS BRIEFS
New novel depicts 1930s Hawk’s Nest Tunnel disaster
HUNTINGTON — The historical fiction novel “Witness at Hawks Nest” by Milton native Dwight Harshbarger was released Saturday.
The book is set in 1930’s West Virginia depicting one of the worst industrial disasters in American history, when at least 800, possibly more than 1,500 people, died of acute silicosis poisoning while digging and drilling Union Carbide’s Hawks Nest (W.Va.) tunnel.
The story follows Orville Orr, a company-paid deputy, who builds a case against the company in the deaths.
Harshbarger is adjunct professor of Community Medicine at West Virginia University Medical School. He served as executive director of Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies (Massachusetts) and as senior vice president for Reebok International, Ltd., and vice president of Sealy, Inc. He earned both an AB and an MA in psychology at West Virginia University, completing his Ph.D. in psychology at the University of North Dakota. He published his first work of fiction, “In the Heart of the Hills: A Novel in Stories,” in 2005.
“’Witness at Hawks Nest’ is a welcome addition to literature about that horrific incident. Harshbarger gives faces and voices to the victims-the men who dug the Hawks Nest tunnel and fell victim to one of the worst industrial disasters in the nation, and the families who loved them,” said Denise Giardina, author of “Storming Heaven” and “The Unquiet Earth,” in a press release.
The book is published by Mid-Atlantic Publishing, an imprint of the Huntington-based Publishers Place.
Go online at www.publishersplace.org for more information.
