The Nine Lives of Charles E. Lively

R.G. Yoho’s book Nine Lives about Baldwin-Felts Detective Agent Charles Lively is compelling and vividly told. The powerful story serves as a stark reminder of where greed, pride and extremes of human folly can lead.

New York Times Best Selling Author, Chris Enss

Nine Lives reads like a compelling dime store novel, but it is rather an exhaustive, factual account of a key player in the history of coal miners during the first half of the 20th Century. C.E. Lively was employed by the Baldwin-Felts “detective” agency just as the agency was in the employ of Big Coal. Understand Lively and understand our collective history. Yoho does a masterful job capturing both the facts and the flavor of the man and the times. Not to be confused with a drab, cut and paste academic tome, this is a scholarly book that is also a great read!

Wess Harris, author of Written in Blood and editor of When Miners March

R.G. Yoho’s book is a fluently rendered, skillfully focused study of Charles Lively, who was a smart, tenacious, and nuanced man at the heart of West Virginia’s fight for coal and the men who mined it. Richly and carefully researched, Yoho’s evocative prose makes this book an absorbing narrative.

Eliot Parker, author of A Knife’s Edge and Asst. Professor of English, University of Mississippi

R.G. Yoho is a West Virginia native with a passion for history and tales of the American West. A proud member of the Western Writers of America, he’s the author of seven Westerns and several nonfiction works. Yoho is also the current President of the West Virginia Writers, Inc.