Coal Flat - Bill Pearson

The story of a fictitious West Coast mining town. The year is 1947. Boarding at the local pub is Paul Rogers, who finished his BA on a rehab grant after three years in the army, and has come back to the flat to teach infants in the small primary school.

The year is 1947. Boarding at the local pub is Paul Rogers, who finished his BA on a Rehab grant after three years in the army, and has come back to the Flat to teach infants in the small primary school.

But Rogers finds that his years away have turned him into an outsider. Inevitably he becomes involved in the complexities of Coal Flat life – school and pub, beer boycott and miners’ strike – but his finey tuned sense of principle loses him more friends than it wins, and when he daringly tries to put into practice the theories of AS Neil with a disturbed child he earns the opprobrium of almost everyone.

Oxford University Press, 1985. New Zealand Classic series. Paperback, 422 pages.

Condition: secondhand paperback in good condition.