Last Man Out: The Story of the Springhill Mine Disaster

Rating:
Summary: BRINGS YOU TO TEARS
Review: In the year 1958, the Springhill Mine Disaster occurred in Nova Scotia, where men were trapped and plunged into darkness below sea level with little hope of escape or ever seeing their families again.

As you reach further into the book you become distraught and filled with anxiety one time and then hope at another interval.. For from day to day the picture changed and one was never sure how the trapped miners were going to have the strength to persevere.

They were challenged beyond what I thought humankind could endure, and then again it is at those weakest moments when we do find that strength, and do the impossible.......like jumping fences too high for us........cutting off our legs if they hurt too badly, those kind of things.

This book is true story and not to be taken for lightly or for granted. I would give this book five golden stars......and then Ms. Melissa Fay Greene for her wonderful courage in writing this great book.

Heather (nettle-girl)

Rating:
Summary: A whole lot more that a survival story!
Review: The basic facts of this book's content - the event surrounding the Spring Hill Mine rescue have been covered in other reviews and I will not waste time rehashing them yet again. Instead I would like to focus upon the less obvious gems within this book that in my opinion transend the amzing story of survival.

Melissa Green takes the reader on a journey not just into a coal mine, but into life in this working class town in 1958. The families, the marriages and the race relations all form a familiar image for those who like myself lived in or near the same time frame(in my case as a child) except that this book provided me an understanding of my parent's world. While my father wasn't a miner or ever a manual laborer nevertheless the men of the mine matched up with faces and families of those I grew up with in a world long lost to history. Of solid men who took care of their families, saved, and yet know how to have fun.

Beyond that personal appeal the medium of the story takes us with the trapped men and allows us to expereince their empotions. Somehow inspite of the fact we know it is coming the disaster seems as fresh and unexpected as it was to the men who also knew that some day there would be the "big one" and prayed they wouldn't be inside when it happened.

The aftermath leaves the reader choking on coal dust and shaken by the sight of crushed men whom they have just gotten to know. Unlike some writers the author doesn't pretty it up and the all the horror and mental trauma of the men is ours to share. We also share through the men's thoughts, thoughts of children and the future they now realize they will never see, thoughts of wives whom they will never hold and the constant and never ending question of what will it be like when death comes? Like so many of us who take life's little pleasures for granted, this disaster brings into focus for these trapped and dying men the value of those things and people they took for granted.

Lie in the coal black mine on a bed of broken rock while thirst unlike anything you have ever known treatens to drive you out of your mind. Realize your pants can't stay up because you've lost so much weight and understand that you can't last, can't live much longer. Then return to thoughts of your parched throat that feels as if it is filled with a splintery wooden stake that keeps "being twisted and twisted."

A harrowing and personal experience. Well done! Well done indeed!

Rating:
Summary: The book that made me cry, laugh and think
Review: The book of Melissa Fay Greene is a wonderfully written, thoughtful description and analysis of an extreme situation: a disaster that strikes an entire town. What I love about the book is that it presents very difficult situations in a compassionate, yet totally true and honest way. The book is based on extensive research and interviews, and the author allows the men who were trapped underground in the mine collapse to speak with their own words, making their suffering and lives very distinct and understandable. Yet the voice of the author is also clearly heard in the book and she draws conclusions from these individual stories, conclusions about the nature of heroism, communal reactions to catastrophes, the solitude of dying. These conclusions are never ponderous: Melissa Fay Greene never preaches or behaves like "senior analysts" we are besieged with. Her reasoning is woven into the story, and she is a superb story-teller. She writes with such a talent and taste for language and words, that every page is a delight to read. This is a book that made me cry, laugh, and think. I recommend it to all readers.

Rating:
Summary: Haunting & Insightful True Story of Tragedy & Survival
Review: This wonderful book tells the story of a Nova Scotia coal mine disaster in 1958 and its rather unique aftermath. Melissa Fay Greene weaves a series of small personal stories into a haunting and evocative narrative: one of the best "disaster" books I have ever read. The resiliency of the survivors, when juxtaposed with the unusual events which followed, including the bizarre intervention of the racist Governor of Georgia, really gives this account a special perspective on history and the human condition.

I found it fascinating that the author, from Georgia, became involved in the saga of the Springhill miners from the back end of the story, as it were. The Georgia connection adds a remarkable coda to the miners' ordeal, but if she had just told that, it would not have resonated as effectively as the book does. She took the time to trace the story to its beginning and to tell it all. For that I am grateful. I learned far more than I had ever known before, and I was drawn in by her skill with narrative and her genuine understanding of/empathy for those involved.

This insightful book is definitely a worthwhile experience.