"Set amongst the deadly coal mine fires of 1960s Pennsylvania, The Hollow Ground is an extraordinary debut that will "grab you by the brisket and not let go." (Gary Shteyngart) "We walk on fire or air, so Daddy liked to say. Basement floors too hot to touch. Steaming green lawns in the dead of winter. Sinkholes, quick and sudden, plunging open at your feet."The underground mine fires ravaging Pennsylvania coal country have forced Brigid Howley and...

It is 1902, and a bright, inexperienced young man named Isaac Bell, only two years out of his apprenticeship at the Van Dorn Detective Agency, has an urgent message for his boss. Hired to hunt for radical unionist saboteurs in the coal mines, he is witness to a terrible accident that makes him think that something else is going on, that provocateurs are at work and bigger stakes are in play. Little does he know just how big they are.

The nine Pennsylvania coal miners who were trapped underground when waters from a flooded mine swept into the Quecreek mine where they were working recount their ordeal and the rescue efforts that eventually got them out alive.

Tells the story of the 1909 coal mine disaster in Cherry, Illinois, that killed hundreds of men, left more than four hundred children fatherless, inspired the first worker's compensation laws, and helped bring about changes in child labor practices