Coaling Station A

About the Book

This down-home collection of tales recounts the rollicking and poignant adventures of a family of eight in a small California town during the 1930s and ‘40s. The lives of Art and Gwynneth Hughes, their son and five daughters, unfold through the recollections of the five sisters.

The reader follows the antics of the kids and the town characters - the pushcart man, the bootlegger, the storyteller, the tiny German storekeeper, the town’s one African American citizen.

We track the family through the Depression and World War II. Through laughter and tears the children remain the story’s daredevil clowns.

About the Author

Gwen Ragland Griffis writes here about a small oil town in the ‘twenties, ‘thirties and ‘forties. Central to the stories she tells is the Hughes family, Art and Gwynneth, their son and five daughters. Griffis spent several years writing for and performing on radio. Her second career was in education, teaching at nearly every level from kindergarten to graduate school, during which time she also wrote for teachers and trained them. She lives with her husband, author Daniel Bruce, near San Francisco Bay where the two of them are well known storytellers.