2008 Barnes & Noble Discover Award Winner

2009 Alabama Library Association Fiction Winner

“They are twin black holes of desperation: the family well, down which, one summer night, 9-year-old Tess Moore watches an unknown woman throw her baby, then steal away; and the mine where her father spends his coal-black days. Narrated in turn by Tess, her siblings, and her parents—each haunted by the unfathomable act of that shadow woman—Gin Phillips's novel, The Well and the Mine is part mystery, part meditation on poverty, race, and community in small-town America during the 1930s. A quietly bold debut, full of heart.”
—O, The Oprah Magazine

“‘After she threw the baby in, nobody believed me for the longest time.’ So begins this astonishing debut novel, a story told in the five voices of an Alabama family in the 1930s. Tess, the middle child, is 9 on the night she sees the woman throw a baby into their well. When the baby is found, already dead, Tess and her sister devote their lives to figuring out who the unfortunate woman was. Much like ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’ ‘The Well and the Mine’ is about the strange contortions forced on humanity by racism and poverty. The family's hometown, Carbon Hill, is a coal-mining town, run largely by a single company. Tess' father works in the mine. During their search for the ‘Well Woman,’ Tess and her sister learn a great deal about desperation and deprivation but also about dignity. Gin Phillips has a remarkable ear for dialogue and a tenderhearted eye for detail; you can hear the pecans and hickory nuts falling from the trees and feel the stillness of a hot summer night. A whisper runs through the novel -- the ghosts of places and people and luscious peach pies, making it a strange combination of dream and nightmare, nightmare and dream.”
—The Los Angeles Times

"Evocative first novel ... moves skillfully between the points of view. With a wisp of suspense, Phillips fully enters the lives of her honorable characters and brings them vibrantly to the page."
—Publishers Weekly

“When you close the book, you'll miss these characters. But The Well and the Mine doesn’t just give you characters who’ll stay with you—it gives you a whole world.”
—Fannie Flagg, author of Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe and Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man 

"The Well and the Mine is an enthralling book, enthralling in the best way, without a whiff of showoffy pyrotechnics or earnest sentimentality. Like Willa Cather’s, Phillips’ language is deep, clear, strong, and true; and her characters are at once interestingly familiar, human, refreshingly strange, and complex. The novel’s structure is deceptively sophisticated — the narrative flow is so compelling, it almost obscures the subtle technical skill that went into its making. The Well and the Mine is pure pleasure to read, and achieves the quietest but most rewarding of literary endeavors: a good story, well told. Gin Phillips is truly a great new American writer.”

 — Kate Christensen, author of The Great Man