Last Man Out: The Story of the Springhill Mine Disaster

Melissa Fay Greene

Mar 2008 · Recorded Books · Narrated by Henry Strozier

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.

About the author

Melissa Fay Greene was a paralegal with Legal Services in McIntosh County, Georgia, when the events that make up her award-winning book Praying for Sheetrock (1991) took place. A recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award, and a National Book Award finalist, Praying for Sheetrock is set in the early 1970s, when the struggle for civil rights that had been going on for years in other parts of the U.S. finally came to McIntosh County. Greene's next book, The Temple Bombing (1996) was the winner of the 1996 Southern Book Critics Award, was named a New York Times Notable Book, and was also a National Book Award finalist. It concerns the 1958 bombing of the Temple, the oldest synagogue in Atlanta.