(Click here to read an excerpt)

This is the fifth book Roger Osborne has written about Appalachia.  He knows the area well, since he was born and grew up there, and his portrayal of life in a coal camp during the '40s and '50s is "exactly the way it was in those days," he states.

When his first book, Land of Yesterday, was published in 1994, it was an immediate hit with both Appalachians and many in other regions of the country.  It, along with his other books (The Mountains Wept, Pilgrimage to an Appalachian Mining Camp, and Voices from Appalachia), have been very popular, resulting in a bridge in Boone County, WV being named after him, and a granite memorial dedicated to him.

My Mountain Angel is a moving story of two children, Curt Powell and Jenny Lassiter, growing up and falling in love.  Eventually, however, Jenny's talent as a singer and her devotion to God causes her to turn her back on Curt and devote her life to singing and helping people who are near death's door.

People in the mining community call her "our little mountain angel."  After a number of years, Jenny's love for Curt forces her to return to him.  But still later, an evangelist persuades her to again turn away from Curt and devote her life to singing.  At the end of an intense struggle, Curt and Jenny find themselves facing a crisis in which death itself threatens to intervene and settle the matter between them once and for all.