“Pikeville” by Dan Conti

Pikeville

Dan Conti
The Book Publishing Pros (2025)
ISBN:  978-1806231577
Reviewed by Terri Stepek for Reader Views (07/2026)

Author Dan Conti opens a window into the past with his novella Pikeville.  Set in 1924 in the very real town of Pikeville, Kentucky, readers will glimpse a world that seems so very different from today.  Yet this historical fiction novel reminds us that today’s society does indeed still carry some of the remnants from that time a century ago.

My initial impression upon reading this story about historical Pikeville was to think how very much had changed.  I thought within the first pages that this would be a great read for so many people who simply don’t understand just how different the times were.  Certainly, these later generations have never witnessed the open loathing displayed during this “simpler” time.  When a person could easily be labeled with a myriad of names from “simple” to “retarded,” or from “colored” to “Negro.”  They very likely don’t realize that referring to a Black person as colored or Negro was considered a polite way to say it- it was fact, not denigration.  Women were likewise treated as “less than” in these times, as well.

To be truthful, in the town of Pikeville, unless you were one of the wealthy robber barons, nearly everyone was treated as cattle.  The company store is an unknown evil in today’s times, no matter what you think of capitalism.  The coal mining company not only owned all the land, but it owned the houses their employees lived in, which were mostly small, horrible shacks that barely kept the weather out.  The company owned the store where employees were required to shop, purchasing everything for horribly inflated prices with company scrip as opposed to US cash.  The system was designed to keep the miner’s family in abject poverty, unable to pay off the debt incurred at the store for necessities, and therefore unable to leave the employ of the company.  It was the new form of slavery, and they took all skin colors.  As if all of this weren’t bad enough in an already impoverished area, the company usually owned many of the government officials in town as well.

But this particular mining company didn’t own Pikeville’s current sheriff, Ben Laurel; and that was about to create some problems.

When a young Black miner washed up on the river’s shore one morning, it was assumed he had drowned.  After all, everyone knows “them coloreds can’t swim.”  With a canoe abandoned in the rough water nearby, it certainly seems like he stole the canoe and fell out.  But Sheriff Laurel is not one to make assumptions, and the facts say otherwise.  The town coroner, which even today is an elected official, also agreed.  Now the Sheriff’s Department, population: 2, has a murder investigation on their hands.  Of course, not everyone wants this death investigated.

Conti has created engaging characters to populate his fictional version of the town.  Many are likable, affable, polite, and caring.  Some are not.  Still others don’t necessarily show their true colors at first.  Readers are given access to the Sheriff’s thoughts and actions as he pursues a killer, standing against many in the town to do so.  It’s an uphill battle that will have widespread and dire consequences.

This tale is a combination of historical fiction and mystery.  But don’t expect it to have the pace of a thriller.  It has the appropriate pace of a small time in that era, or what some still refer to today as “mountain time.”  Things will get done, but they won’t happen at the break-neck pace of the big city.  What Conti has created is a look back at life in that time and place.  I found it to be very relatable.  Yes, there were some ignorant, abhorrent, spiteful people.  But they weren’t all that way.  The Sheriff himself has a wonderful decades-old friendship with an elderly Black woman, and that relationship sheds brilliant light on the prevailing moods and attitudes of the times.

I mentioned earlier in this review that I initially thought this would be a very eye-opening read for many in the younger generations, and that remains true.  But I also realized that within this novella one can easily find that our current society still bears some echoes of the past, even while reminding us that things have radically changed in many ways in just a few generations.

I found Dan Conti’s Pikeville to be a book well worth exploring with moments that beg the reader to stop and consider the profundity of events.  I would have preferred a slightly tighter plot line, with a little less interest in the minutiae of the times.  But don’t misunderstand me, Conti does a great job of taking us back and giving his readers a genuine feel for the times.  This is a great book for fans of historical fiction, life in Appalachia, Black history, and early 20th-century society.  With broad themes of injustice, racism, immigration, and man’s inhumanity to man, this story may well stick with you long after you close the book.