Carbon Copies

About this book

County Durham, 1926. In the pit village of Easterlee, the Haddon Coal Company owns the houses, the shop credit and even the chapel bench. Sixteen-year-old Kit Lowery is its office boy: a celluloid collar, a black Imperial typewriter, and a second copy of every letter on carbon paper. On the first of May the owners lock the miners out. Nine days later the General Strike collapses, and Kit, being staff, keeps walking up to the office every morning while his father, his best friend and his whole village go hungry. His sister starts calling him Mister. All Kit wants is to keep his head down and his wage coming home. But the carbon copies keep piling up, and they say things about Easterlee's future, and about its dead, that nobody was ever meant to read.