Last Man Out: The Story of the Springhill Mine Disaster
Written by Melissa Fay Greene
Narrated by Henry Strozier
4/5
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Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this audiobook
One evening in late October 1958, the deepest coal mine in North America "bumped"-its rock floors heaved up and smashed into rock ceilings. Most of the men on the shift perished. But nineteen men were trapped alive a mile below the earth's surface, struggling to survive without food, water, light, or fresh air.
Almost a week passed without rescue. Hopes of finding life dwindled; then a miracle happened: Rescuers stumbled across a broken pipe that led to the cave of survivors. In the media circus that followed, the survivors' endurance was mythologized and twisted, and the state of Georgia's tourism ploy-inviting the survivors to recuperate on a Georgia beach-turned racist and pitted the miners against each other.
Using long-lost stories and interviews with survivors, Greene has reconstructed an extraordinary drama of their struggle and miraculous rescue.
Melissa Fay Greene
Melissa Fay Greene is the author of Praying for Sheetrock; The Temple Bombing; Last Man Out; There Is No Me Without You: One Woman’s Odyssey to Rescue her Country’s Children; and No Biking in the House Without A Helmet. Her honors include two National Book Award nominations, a National Book Critics Circle Award nomination, the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize, the Southern Book Critics Circle Award, the ACLU National Civil Liberties Award, the Hadassah Myrtle Wreath Award, the Salon Book Award, Elle Magazine’s Readers’ Prize, the Georgia Author Award, and a Dog Writers of America Award. She is a current Guggenheim Fellow.
More audiobooks from Melissa Fay Greene
There Is No Me Without You Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5No Biking in the House Without a Helmet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Last Man Out: The Story of the Springhill Mine Disaster Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
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Reviews for Last Man Out
29 ratings4 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5On October 23, 1958, a devastating "bump" occurred at the 13,400 foot level of a coal mine in Springhill, Nova Scotia, Canada. It killed or trapped 174 miners. This book starts with a history of coal mining in Nova Scotia and specifically Springhill and then describes the life of a coal miner and his family.Greene did years of research including interviewing survivors, children of miners and wives of survivors and victims of the bump. Her descriptions of what the miners experienced during the seven to nine days they waited for rescue make for tough reading. This especially true of the miner whose arm was caught under huge timbers and rocks and could not be freed. Greene described how the experienced destroyed some of the men as they never attained their pre disaster personalities becoming poor fathers and husbands.One unexpected topic the book covers, is the Segregation laws of Georgia and the American deep South. The survivors were given a free holiday on Jekyll Island in Georgia as a tourism promotion. Planning was well on the way when the Governor's assistant discovered there was a black miner in the group. The scrambling to solve this political nightmare for the Georgians makes for interesting reading.While I was reading, it disturbed me that Greene had included conversations in quotation marks of what took place underground. In her end notes she answers my concern by explaining that the quotes are from transcripts of interviews that were done with the miners immediately after they were rescued.This is a very complete description of the disaster by a woman from the State of Georgia.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is a compelling story of miners who were trapped underground. In [Last Man Out] [Melissa Fay Greene] does an excellent job of capturing the emotions of those trapped as well as the families above ground. She also connects the political and economic climate of the time by telling the story of how these Canadian miners ended up connected to Georgia's fight for tourist dollars and caught experiencing segregation first hand. This is an emotional and well told story on many levels.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This is a rivetting story of a great mine disaster that became a miracle rescue operation. The author has captured the tension, drama, and elation as events unfold, day by day by day. The events of the trip to Georgia, where the hero of the bump was excluded from hotels and dinners because he happened to be black, has been told, and how he encouraged the others to go. A great story.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5All her books are great. This could have been a standard disaster-survival tome. Instead it turns out to be about race relations. Don't want to give it away, read it, you won't regret your decision.