Last Man Out

The deepest coal mine in North America was notoriously unpredictable. One late October evening in 1958, it "bumped" - its rock floors heaving up and smashing into rock ceilings. A few miners staggered out, most of the 174 on shift did not.

Nineteen men were trapped, plunged into darkness, hunger, thirst, and hallucination. As days and nights passed, the survivors began to hope for death by gas rather than from thirst. Above ground, journalists and families stood in despairing vigil, as rescuers brought out scores of the dead. The hope of finding life undergound faded and families made funeral preparations.

Then, a miracle: Rescuers stumbled across a broken pipe leading to a cave of survivors, then a second group was discovered.

A media circus followed. Ed Sullivan, then the state of Georgia, invited survivors to visit. Publicity, politics, and segregation sorted the men differently than they had ordered themselves. Underground, the one black survivor nursed a dying man; in Atlanta, Governor Marvin Griffin said: "I will not shake hands with a Negro."

If every great writer has one tale of peril, heroism, and survival, Last Man Out is Melissa Fay Greene's. Using long-lost stories and interviews with survivors, Greene has reconstructed the drama of their struggle to stay alive

Trapped a mile below the earths surface, with scant hope of rescue, nineteen miners spent over a week without light, drink, food. This is the extraordinary story of their suffering, their courage, and their miraculous rescue.

Advance Praise for Last Man Out

"In Last Man Out, Melissa Fay Greene so captures the experience of being trapped in the absolute night of a failed coal-mine that you can almost see the pale beams of dying headlamps and taste the last sips of coal-laced drinking water. Having shared the experience, a sympathetic reader cannot help but marvel at the absurdity of the disaster's aftermath. This is a fine, harrowing, brutally detailed work that will make you savor daylight in a way you never have—unless of course you're already a coal miner."

--Erik Larsen, author of Isaac's Storm

Praise for Praying for Sheetrock

"A monumental social history with implications that go far beyond the borders of a tiny coastal Georgia county. Through a combination of oral history and interpretive narrative, Greene has created a work of great drama, a chorus of voices that is both disturbing and inspiring."

--The Boston Globe

Melissa Fay Greene's books, PRAYING FOR SHEETROCK and THE TEMPLE BOMBING, both were National Book Award finalists, winning numerous other awards. SHEETROCK appeared on the "J" list of the top 100 works of journalism of the 20th century. Greene has written for The New Yorker, Newsweek, New York Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic, and Life.<br>She lives in Atlanta with her husband and six children.

Contents

Part I

1 The Thunder of Baritones

2 A World without Sun

3 Home of the Long Tides

4 The Bump

5 "What Am I Doing Here? What Am I Doing Here?"

6 "When a Miner Says It's Bad, Look Out"

7 A Dark Chaos

8 "If There Are Boys Alive, They'll Be Expecting Us"

9 "Oh Dear, Oh Dear, I Would Help You if You Was Caught"

10 In Black, White, and Silver

11 "There Has Got to Be a Way Out, Boys!"

12 No Hope Whatsoever

13 "It's Good Day to Him,I Reckon."

14 Hard Times

15 When Sleep and Waking Feel the Same

16 "What on Earth Will I Do without Him?"

17 The Lost Lovely Sky

18 A Malevolent Factory

19 "Ruther've Done Chicken Farming"

20 "You Know He's Bad People, but You Can't Help But Like Him"

21 Birthday Party

22 Day-Glo on Velvet

23 Good Night, Sweetheart

24 Could a Mouse Escape?

25 Unnecessary Humiliation

26 Percy's Brook

27 Gas Like a Night Nurse

28 The Boxer

29 A Particle of Light

30 Home Cooking

31 Last Man Out

32 That Lovely Fresh Air

33 You Ain't Got Me Yet

34 Between Hell and Nova Scotia

35 Angels, Angels

36 Wives and Husbands

37 The Singing Miner

Part II

38 The Richest, the Most Exclusive, the Most Inaccessible Club in the World

39 Sunlight

40 Man of the Year

41 "Seems Like a Fellow's Discouraged"

42 The Miners' Code

Sources and Acknowledgments

Endnotes

Bibliography

Index