What does “privilege” mean when you grow up in a coal camp at the edge of a river that floods, in a county the rest of the country only remembers during disaster?

In Appalachian Privilege: The Story of Nobody, W. D. Marcum tells the deeply personal story of a coal miner’s son from Logan County, West Virginia, who leaves home in search of something larger—only to discover that leaving is never simple.

From a 934-square-foot company house to the deck of a U.S. Navy frigate sailing foreign waters…From blocking roads during coal strikes to dining in the Inns of Court in London…From working night shifts as a “rent-a-cop” to representing corporate executives in high-stakes litigation…From silence in college classrooms to standing in courtrooms among the wealthy and powerful…This memoir is not a story of resentment. It is a story of gratitude, tension, guilt, ambition, and love.

Marcum writes about the contradictions of Appalachia—the pride and the poverty, the stereotypes and the strength, the coal strikes, the floods, the opioid crisis, black lung, and the quiet endurance of families who rarely see themselves reflected in national narratives. He reflects on military service, institutionalization, cultural displacement, survivorship bias, and the strange guilt of “getting out” while others remain.

At its heart, this book is a tribute to two people: his mother and father, who never left home, but gave him the courage to do so.

Appalachian Privilege asks a simple question:

What if the greatest privilege was not wealth or status—but parents who sacrificed everything so their children could stand in rooms they never entered?

This is the story of nobody.

And of everyone who ever felt like they came from nowhere.