Andrew Krivak’s novel 'Mule Boy' takes readers inside a Pennsylvania coal mine

Summary

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NPR's Book of the Day

Episode Summary: Andrew Krivak’s novel 'Mule Boy' takes readers inside a Pennsylvania coal mine

Date: March 4, 2026
Host: Scott Simon
Guest: Andrew Krivak

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Main Theme

This episode explores Andrew Krivak’s new novel, Mule Boy, an immersive, stream-of-consciousness narrative about a 13-year-old coal miner in 1929 Pennsylvania. Through an intimate conversation, Krivak and host Scott Simon unravel the novel’s stylistic choices, its deep connection to immigrant mining communities, the trauma and heritage passed through generations, and the enduring complexity of the mining industry in American memory.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Stream-of-Consciousness and Orality

• Mule Boy is structured as "one long, searing sentence" to reflect the depths of memory and the cadence of oral storytelling.
  • Krivak’s Intent: “I wanted to get as close as I could to storytelling as an oral storytelling rather than as a written one.” (05:08)
  • Use of commas throughout mimics a storyteller's breaths and hesitations.
  • The narrative unfolds as the protagonist, Andro Prak, in old age, relives a single traumatic day from his youth—a literary meditation on memory and survival. (04:51, 06:24)

Family History & Immigrant Identity

• The story is inspired by Krivak’s own Slovak immigrant family and their life as miners.
  • Krivak: “His father died the same way my grandfather died...in 1927 in a collapse.” (02:47)
  • Emphasis on mining as specialized, highly skilled work, not merely unskilled labor: “You just didn’t pull them off the street. They were made. They knew where to put the dynamite, they knew where the good seams were…” (03:17)
  • Stories handed down by Krivak's grandmothers and aunt Genevieve animate the book.
    • Krivak: “I’m only a writer because of the stories I heard from my grandmothers.” (05:49)

Mining Community and Character Relationships

• Central trio: John Chabala, Stefan Bozak, and a mule named Wicked.
  • Mules, essential to mining operations, are granted as much—if not more—value as human workers: “The mules were more valuable than the mule boys and also pretty hard to take care of.” (03:59)
  • The bond between Andro and Wicked, both survivors of hard lives, underscores the novel’s empathy and attentiveness to the lesser-voiced.

Trauma, Survivor’s Guilt, and Gratitude

• Andro's lifelong process of reckoning with loss and survival.
  • Simon: “Are there ghosts walking through his life?”
    • Krivak: “The ghosts are there all the time…people have come to him over the years to ask, what did you do? What did you fail to do?” (04:51)
  • Survivor’s guilt and gratitude intertwine:
    • Krivak: “Survivor's guilt I think is why he's… struggled so hard his whole life. But…he is living a life of gratitude. Because he has realized that he's had to live this life in order to tell the story of those who have not survived as long as he has.” (06:50)

Literature as Solace

• Andro finds comfort in the Book of Jonah and Shakespeare:
  • Krivak: “He starts reading Shakespeare when he's in college…He hears of plays in which men and women struggle. And he thinks, yes, I know what that is like.” (07:38)
  • A fellow prisoner teaches him Hebrew and the story of Jonah, paralleling Andro’s own unended quest for understanding and reconciliation.

The Complexity of the Mining Industry’s Legacy

• Both nostalgia and condemnation live in Krivak’s reflections:
  • Simon: “Reading your book did not make me regret that the mining industry has diminished.” (08:14)
  • Krivak: “It killed them, killed them both, and not just them, but hundreds of thousands of men. So I, I would let that doubleness sit there.” (08:44)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “God may speak Latin, but the angels speak Slovak.” (03:05, quote from the novel)
• “You just didn’t pull [miners] off the street. They were made. They knew where to put the dynamite, they knew where the good seams were...”
  —Andrew Krivak (03:17)
• “The entire book is almost a meditation, if you will, of Andhra Prak thinking about all those people...what did you do? What did you fail to do?”
  —Andrew Krivak (04:51)
• “I’m only a writer because of the stories I heard from my grandmothers.”
  —Andrew Krivak (05:49)
• “Survivor's guilt...is why he's…struggled so hard his whole life. But...he is living a life of gratitude.”
  —Andrew Krivak (06:50)
• “It killed them, killed them both, and not just them, but hundreds of thousands of men. So I, I would let that doubleness sit there.”
  —Andrew Krivak (08:44)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [01:24] Episode premise and background on the book’s form/premise.
• [02:01] Krivak reads from Mule Boy, immersing listeners in the mine’s world.
• [02:47] Personal inspiration: Krivak’s family mining history and legacy of loss.
• [03:05] Reflection on immigrant communities and mining expertise.
• [03:59] On the characters: relationship between miners, mule boy, and mule.
• [04:51] The novel’s structure and meditation on memory, ghosts, and trauma.
• [05:49] Influence of family storytelling and oral history.
• [06:24] Discussion of the single-long-sentence format as oral tradition.
• [06:50] Relationship between survivor’s guilt and gratitude.
• [07:38] Role of literature (Jonah, Shakespeare) as solace in the protagonist’s life.
• [08:14] Mixed feelings about the close of the coal-mining era.
• [08:44] Krivak’s nuanced view of the mining industry’s legacy.

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Tone and Language

The conversation is reflective, direct, and deeply empathetic—grounded in lived experience and the oral tradition of storytelling. Krivak’s language evokes both dignity and sorrow, while Simon’s questions respectfully probe the emotional and historical dimensions of both the novel and Krivak’s own family story.

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Summary prepared for those seeking an in-depth understanding of the episode’s discussion and themes.

Transcript

[Andrew Limbong]

Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbong. If you were to be reductive and dismissive of books written in stream of consciousness, you could say that it's showy, that it's style for style's sake. But in the new novel Mule Boy, there's a reason why it feels like one long sentence. The novel is about a boy who works as a miner in Pennsylvania in 1929 when something goes wrong. And in this interview with NPR's Scott Simon, author Andrew Krivak talks about wanting to write a book that communicated orality, that sounded more like a guy telling you his life story than a writer writing one. More on that and his complicated feelings about the mining industry. Up ahead.

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[Scott Simon]

Mule Boy is a novel told in what may look like one long, searing sentence, picking up a New Year's Day, 1929, when Andro Prak, 13 year old son of Slovak immigrants, begins work as what's called a mule boy in a Pennsylvania coal mine. That very day there is a collapse in the mine and Andro survives. But does he ever recover? Andrew Krivak, the author and National Book Award finalist, joins us now. Thank you so much for being with us.

[Andrew Krivak]

Thank you, Scott. Appreciate the invitation.

[Scott Simon]

Let me ask you to read from your book to take us into this world of the mine.

[Andrew Krivak]

Sure. And when the miner had brought to the surface all the coal he was expected to mine in a day, he went home, back to the patch to see his wife and his family and to take a bath and to eat his supper. Though the mines were dirty, they were no dirtier than a shop floor or a tannery or railyard. And no miner stayed dirty longer than was necessary. The miner worked, but he knew his business, and his business was what lay beneath the earth. And the earth took good care of him if he worked. And John Cibola and Stefan Bozak filled that train of Three cars in what might have been two hours or so. And Wicked. And I pulled them away and onto the gangway and down the tracks.

[Scott Simon]

It's a tough way to make a living. And Andro knows the dangers from his own family, doesn't he?

[Andrew Krivak]

He does, yes. His father died the same way my grandfather died, my father's father, in 1927 in a collapse. What I wanted to do was to think about what my grandfather might have been through, both in the act of coal mining and then in the collapse that essentially took his life.

[Scott Simon]

I was struck by the line when one of the miners tells Andro, God may speak Latin, but the angels speak Slovak.

[Andrew Krivak]

Yeah.

[Scott Simon]

This was a community of immigrants building America, wasn't it?

[Andrew Krivak]

It's true, yes. I mean, I am the grandson of immigrants who were coal miners. They were miners, the miners. And as I say in the novel too, they weren't just. You just didn't pull them off the street. They were made. They knew where to put the dynamite, they knew where the good seams were and they. They paid their buddies, they paid the mule boy. And you know, as my mother used to say that her father would say, you know, I'd rather do this, and I'm really good at it. So it was not easy work. But this is what these men did

[Scott Simon]

tell us about this trio that is caught together in the collapse. John Chabala, Stefan Bozak and a mule named Wicked, who becomes his own character.

[Andrew Krivak]

So John Chibble and Stefan Bozak, I think I had to have the miners down there. They were the men doing the work and their two buddies. And the mule boy was almost a way in which I could get the character of Ander Praack in there and have him move around, give him the job to do. And so the trio, essentially, they know their work and the mules were more valuable than the Mule boys and also pretty hard to take care of. And so I wanted Andre Prak and Wicked the Mule to have that relationship, which is slightly more than, you know, than men to boys. He understands the mule because the two of them both have had hard lives.

[Scott Simon]

We hear Andro's story, of course, because he survives and is able to go on. But as he grows up, are there ghosts walking through his life?

[Andrew Krivak]

The ghosts are there all the time. The novel actually takes place in the 24 hour period in which Andrew Prak is an old man in a place far away from the Pennsylvania mines. He's living in a house in New Hampshire and it's this stream of consciousness. Call it what you will, I Wanted to get as close as I could to storytelling as an oral storytelling rather than as a written one. So. So the entire book is almost a meditation, if you will, of Andhra Prak thinking about all those people that who have come to him over the years to ask, what did you do? What did you fail to do? And it's the one day where he's thinking this through, waiting for the one person that he really wants to come. Waiting for her to show up. I mean, all my life I heard stories about the mines from my grandmothers. I never met my grandfathers, but I feel like I knew them my entire life.

[Scott Simon]

Of course, your aunt Genevieve.

[Andrew Krivak]

My aunt Genevieve, Yes. She's the last of my father's siblings. 95. And she is the same way. She was six months in my grandmother's belly when her father died. And she has said that I never met my father but I knew him my entire life through the stories. And really I'm only a writer because of the stories I heard from my grandmothers.

[Scott Simon]

I refer to it as one long sentence which is not only technically wrong but maybe forbidding. On the other hand, you open the book. That's what it looks like. What is it in your mind?

[Andrew Krivak]

I don't really have a word for what I'm trying to do. What I want to do is try to approximate the breadth of oral storytelling. I wondered how would this look if I just use commas? Throughout the novel in which essentially Andhra Prak was inhaling and exhaling as he

[Scott Simon]

told his story, is Andro consumed by what we would now maybe call a mixture of gratitude and survivor's guilt.

[Andrew Krivak]

I think gratitude comes at the end. Yes, at the end of the story. The evening. Finally. You know, Aristotle said tragedy should happen in a 24 hour period. Survivor's guilt I think is why he's. He struggled so hard his whole life. But in that other mountainous place. Well, I hope the only thing that comes across is that he is living a life of gratitude. Because he has realized that he's had to live this life in order to tell the story of those who have not survived as long as he has.

[Scott Simon]

And as we note, the trauma is inescapable. He drinks too much, he loses more, right? But he finds solace in the book of Jonah and Shakespeare. What does he find there?

[Andrew Krivak]

He starts reading Shakespeare when he's in college studying engineering because that's what he was supposed to do when he. He hears of plays in which men and women struggle. And he thinks, yes, I know what that is like. And in the book of Jonah. It's Jacobson, the man he's in prison with, who teaches him Hebrew because he's got time. That's all they've got is time. And you could think of this as a retelling of the Jonas story, but I've always wondered about that lack of ending at the ending of the very short Jonah story. Andro is there as well, underneath his tree, understanding, but still not yet understanding.

[Scott Simon]

You know, early in my repertorial career, I did stories with miners when mines were closing and they were mad. They lost what were good paying jobs and also their lives and livelihoods and I think what we'd now call their sense of identity. And I want to respect the loss they felt. But reading your book did not make me regret that the mining industry has diminished.

[Andrew Krivak]

You know, my grandfathers missed the work they did. I've been down in mines and I felt oddly, a strange comfort in there. And I and I got a sense of understanding what work they did. But at the same time, it killed them, killed them both, and not just them, but hundreds of thousands of men. So I, I would let that doubleness sit there.

[Scott Simon]

Andrew Krivock, his new novel, Mule Boy, thank you so much for being with us.

[Andrew Krivak]

Thank you, Scott. I appreciate it.

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