by Mike Telin
“I first read the novel back in 1992 when I was living in Los Angeles. And right away I started thinking that it could make a great musical,” award-winning Northeast Ohio poet and playwright Brian Smallwood recalled during a telephone conversation. The novel Smallwood is referring to, Germinal, by French novelist Émile Zola, graphically portrays the dismal lives of coal miners and their families during the mid-1800s.