Sam Adams’ novel Jac on the experiences of boyhood in a wartime coal mining village is a tender contribution to the literary effort to capture the distinct spirit of the south Wales Valleys. The natural and human worlds, in close contact, are a source of individual and social lessons to be learned for Jac, Adams’ preteen protagonist.

Birds, spiders and ants are opportunities for family and community members to pass on, through metaphors, local values of hard work, cooperation and resourcefulness. The industrial landscape is a playground rich with dangerous opportunities for learning trust, motivation and comradeship, in preparation for a life in the pits or the domain of warfare.

Undoubtedly drawing in part from some of his personal memories, Adams nonetheless has an uncanny ability to remember how it feels to exist in the world as a child. Readers for whom these feelings are long lost, on the other hand, can become refamiliarised with the mysteries, confusion and curiosity of childhood through Jac’s beautifully uncomplicated descriptions of the physical and intangible world, seen and – like the grown-up realm of the weapons factory covered in grassland – out of sight.