We Be Here When the Morning Comes is a book about people and courage and dignity striving to attain a measure of control over their lives and destinies. It is also a book about Appalachia and about the American labor movement. It describes, from the point of view of the striking mountaineers, the thirteen-month strike at the Brookside and Highsplint coal mines in Harlan County, KY—a strike marked by sporadic violence, controversial court orders, arrests of miners’ wives, the death of one striker, and the threat of open warfare between union supporters and ‘scabs.’