The Cousin Jacks

The Cousin Jacks

From the tin mines of Cornwall to the iron ranges of America-seven generations, one family, and the cost of going underground

In 1748, Richard Caddow signed his name in a Cornish parish register, leaving the first written proof his family existed. Before that day, there were no Caddows-or if there were, they left no marks.
A century later, Joseph Caddow made a choice that would define six generations: at twenty-five, he descended into the darkness of a lead mine and never returned to the grass. By 1880, his son Tom faced a different choice-stay in Cornwall and starve, or cross an ocean to the copper mines of Michigan. Tom couldn't read. He couldn't write. But he could sink a shaft deeper than any man in the district.

The Cousin Jacks follows the Caddow family from agricultural obscurity through the brutal glory of Cornwall's mining age, across the Atlantic to Michigan's copper country and Minnesota's iron ranges, and finally to the archives where Unwin Caddow spent years recovering the family that history nearly erased. This is the story of the men who went underground and the women who waited at grass. Of Leonard, killed at nine playing tag with a train. Of Ellen, crossing the Atlantic alone with two babies and a canvas bag. Of Tom, who became a Masonic Captain though he couldn't read his own initiation oath. Of Pearl, the outsider who stayed. Of Martha, who lived ninety-eight years and remembered everything.

Based on meticulous genealogical research, The Cousin Jacks imagines the interior lives behind the census records-the conversations never recorded, the choices never explained, the emotional cost of labor that breaks bodies and oceans that break families.

They found valuable things in darkness and brought them to light. This is their testament.
"A powerful saga of working-class endurance and the diaspora that scattered the Cornish across the globe. Gomez honors the documented truth while creating the voices that history silenced."

Perfect for readers of:
• Kristin Hannah's The Four Winds
• Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See
• Geraldine Brooks's People of the Book
• Family sagas with deep historical research
• Stories of immigration, labor, and working-class resilience