The Party of Humanity

I an isolated “holler” in northern Tennessee, Marie Cirillo, an ex-nun, has lived and worked with local people for twenty years. The rivers of the area are polluted by runoff from coal mines, and the people seem irrevocably poor. This part of Appalachia is a kind of colony, because British coal companies own much of the land. Marie Cirillo’s holler seems lost in time and chronic deprivation.

But for the past seven years, she and her neighbors have been developing a la...