Bartoletti interviewed sixteen individuals who were children during the early twentieth century. Additionally, she used interview tapes and transcripts of local oral histories from Eckley Village and the Bureau of Archives and History at the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. Although she does not quote the same individuals consistently throughout the work, the same voice emerges from the text.

Children named Carlo, Samuel, Lil, and Massimino are the central characters of Growing up in Coal Country. Each personal recollection is a story within the story of life in the mine or the mining town. Each recollection was pieced together by the author into chapters that describe work, play, and home life in "Coal Country."

The individual voices from the past echo the themes of determination, hope, hard work, and courage. Bartoletti explores not only the hard life in the mines but the hard life...