Our Story: 77 Hours That Tested Our Friendship and Our Faith - Softcover

Goodell, Jeff

3.88

123 ratings by Goodreads

9780786890651: Our Story: 77 Hours That Tested Our Friendship and Our Faith

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0786890657 ISBN 13: 9780786890651

Publisher: Hyperion, 1900

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The nation stopped and held its collective breath as word spread of the plight of the nine Pennsylvania coal miners who where trapped underground for 77 hours. Nine miners were below when water trapped in an adjacent mine burst through the wall of the new mine they were working. As the air grew thinner and the men grew colder, they listened to the water rising around them in the honeycomb of coal veins. Sitting in a small air pocket, the men wrote farewell notes to their families and sealed them in a lunch bucket.On the surface, the rescue effort became hampered when a special drill bit snapped. The drill would lay idle for 14 hours, effectively halting the rescue, as a replacement was brought in. Hope and despondency alternated, as the determined rescue team made progress, then hit setbacks. Below ground, standing in water and chilling temperatures, the men rode the same waves of hope and despair, all in complete darkness.The successful rescue of the Nine for Nine miners lifted the spirits of an entire nation. Now everyone can hear the complete story of this harrowing accident -- how these men and their families had the strength and bravery it took to survive the incredible ordeal, and of the frantic efforts to save them.

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About the Author:

Jeff Goodell has been a staff writer at Rolling Stone and a frequent contributor to the New York Times Magazine. His stories have appeared in many anthologies, including Best Business Stories of the Year 2001, and his commentary can often be heard on NPR's All Things Considered. His first book, The Cyberthief and the Samurai, was about the hunt for notorious computer hacker Kevin Mitnick. His memoir, Sunnyvale: The Rise and Fall of a Silicon Valley Family, was a New York Times Notable Book, and was picked as one of the ten best books of 2000 by critic Walter Kirn. He lives near Saratoga Springs, New York, with his wife and two kids.

From Publishers Weekly:

The story of the nine Pennsylvania coal miners who were trapped underground for more than three days last July could have easily been sidetracked by aphorisms about America's post-September 11 can-do spirit and the like. But since this tale is mainly told via the miners' own words, it's a blessedly unsentimental and true-to-life account of a horrifying situation and a triumphant escape. Goodell (The Cyberthief and the Samurai: The True Story of Kevin Mitnick-And the Man Who Hunted Him Down) proves a knowing scribe for this story of adventure and endurance, alternating between filling in the setting when necessary and just letting the miners talk, oral history style. For example, one miner, John Unger, recalls, "To keep our spirits up, we talked about what we were going to do when we got out.... Nobody had anything extravagant in mind. Harpo was going to have a cigarette and a beer and a chew." Goodell then adds, "At about 2:30 p.m., Yost's drill finally reached a depth of about 230 feet, roughly 15 feet above the floor of the mine." It's a pulse-racing tale, in which a drill punches into an old, abandoned, water-filled mine, quickly flooding the space where the miners are working, trapping them in a dark, cold pocket of rapidly diminishing air. Goodell wisely keeps the focus on these hard-bitten men and the bravery that kept them going through those long, indistinguishable days and nights underground. Photos.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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