How Green Was My Valley: Reviewed by Katy Mackay

Photography by Savannah Dean

I am drawn to classic books and like to re-read them time and time again. I feel like a seeker to whom the story is just part of a book. It is what the book is saying in the passages underlined and highlighted that pulls me back. Italian writer Italo Calvino said, “A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.”

For me, Richard Llewellyn’s How Green Was My Valley (1939) is indeed a classic. It is a story told in musical language that carries the reader back to 19th Century Welsh coalmines. It is a story that links my everyday life with the lives of my humble and hard-working ancestors who pulled shale and coal from beneath the earth to fuel the homes and businesses of the industrial age.

As he prepares to leave home forever, the story’s narrator, Huw Morgan, reminisces about the golden days of his youth. “There is something big to be felt by a man who has made up his mind to leave the things he knows and go off to strange places,” narrates Huw. He remembers a time when his family prospered and coal slag had not yet blackened the valley; it was a time of transformational change when industries failed and families sent their sons and daughters elsewhere for a better life. It was a time not that different from our own.

Llewellyn left us a vast and timeless truth.  As we reach ahead to answer the call of life, it is good to look back and hold fast to the memories of our own green valleys.

About Katy Mackay

Katy Mackay is the daughter of an entertainer and a business manager. That means she has been balancing left brain/right brain issues her entire life. She has a BA in music and communications from Florida State University, and a MA in organizational leadership from Drake University. A career marketer, Katy, a former adjunct professor, currently serves as Senior Vice President and Director of Marketing at Tyndall Federal Credit Union. She plays and sings with the Ukulele Orchestra of St. Andrews and is a public speaker on the topic of Alzheimer’s disease. Katy and her husband, Bruce, live in Lynn Haven with Molly and Cooper, their beloved cocker spaniels.