The turbulent history of the south Wales coalfield is a constant theme of this complex story of childhood and family history viewed through the eyes and in the memory of an acclaimed writer and editor.

Where the Stream Ran Red  is the story of one place, one family (yet, in many ways hauntingly true of families throughout the south Wales coalfield) whose narrative takes us as far as the West Indies in the time of slavery, the high seas off Singapore and the pogroms of Tsarist Ukraine.

This is the story of the entry of Gilfach Goch into history as a mining valley, separate from the anthill of the forked valleys of Rhondda, with its own curious tripartite administration and its own special part to play in the turbulence of the south Wales coalfield. The red-tinted bed of a slim stream rising in the moorland overlooking a small, isolated unpopulated valley, a cil fach , gave its name to the writer’s birthplace.

Out of the years of productivity and optimism, and the grinding misery of long, bitter strikes and economic depression, rises a compendium of stories, in which stark and sobering facts jostle with speculative reconstruction of events in past centuries and memories of boyhood in the Valleys.

‘I was prompted to write by a sense of my own failure to ask my parents, sisters and others, who were witnesses of events before I was born and during forgotten childhood years, about their experiences in two wars and the years of strikes and depression between them.’ explained author Sam Adams.

‘In the boyhood times I recall the pits were busy day and night, all able-bodied men and increasing numbers of women were employed - and we all had ration books. Families had to bear the pain of the loss of loved ones in the war, sickness had to be borne, but people simply got on with it, in the valleys as elsewhere.’

‘Stoicism and understatement were ingrained in the code of the mining valleys; I do not think my family differed from others in telling me very little about their own histories. In my case, by the time I was thoughtful enough to want to find out, it was already too late. There was nothing I could do about all the lost personal testimony, except try to ensure that our children and grandchildren would not regret, as I have done, missed chances to ask how we came to be where we are.’

‘I decided I would write for them what I remembered, and what I could find out, about the family and the times in which they lived.’ he added.

In common with many in south Wales, the author’s family has roots spread wide – from Derbyshire and Somerset to Cardiganshire, Carmarthenshire and Breconshire, and tales of origins (lost glories even) carefully preserved and passed down from generation to generation.

Writer and editor Sam Adams was born and brought up in Gilfach Goch, Glamorgan, when it was still a busy mining valley, his elementary school days there coinciding with the Second World War. Having studied English at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, he combined a career in education with work as writer and editor.

His poems and critical writing have appeared in all the magazines of Welsh writing in English and he has made more than a hundred contributions to the Carcanet Press magazine PN Review . His editorial work includes the Collected Poems and Collected Stories of Roland Mathias and among his other publications are three monographs in the Writers of Wales series, three collections of poems and the novel Prichard’s Nose (Y Lolfa, 2010).

Where the Stream Ran Red – Memories and Histories of a Welsh Mining Valley by Sam Adams (£9.99, Y Lolfa) is available now.