I Will Lift Up My Eyes and its sequel Heaven Came So Near concern the difficult transition of the Cutlip family as they move from their isolated farm to live and work in a lumber camp.
In River Rising!, isolation, ignorance and poverty have contributed to the deaths by pneumonia of York Allen's parents, and he vows to become a doctor to help the farm families of the remote hollows of Appalachia.
Some of the characters in the Great Depression novel Hawk's Nest are rural West Virginians lured away from their farms by the large construction project at Gauley Bridge, building the tunnel and hydroelectric plant, but most come from other parts of the United States.
Dust Bowl refugees, Southern blacks, Eastern European immigrants from the northeast and even former white collar workers ruined by the Depression converge, attracted by plentiful work and good wages.
In the novel, as in the historical disaster, the supervisors and their managers and company doctors discount the health risks associated with breathing the silica dust created by digging and dynamiting the tunnel shaft, and most of the characters steadily weaken and die as their lungs are systematically ruined.