Purchase

Amazon

Kindle

Barnes & Noble

Books-A-Million

Indie BookShop

Add to Wish List

Also by Hector Tobar:

Deep Down Dark, October 2014
Hardcover / e-Book
The Barbarian Nurseries, October 2011
Hardcover / e-Book

DEEP DOWN DARK
By: Hector Tobar

The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine, and the Miracle That Set Them

Farrar, Straus and Giroux
October 2014
On Sale: October 6, 2014
320 pages
ISBN: 0374280606
EAN: 9780374280604
Kindle: B00J6TV17C
Hardcover / e-Book
Add to Wish List

Non-Fiction

When the San José mine collapsed outside of Copiapó, Chile, in August 2010, it trapped thirty-three miners beneath thousands of feet of rock for a record-breaking sixty-nine days. The entire world watched what transpired above-ground during the grueling and protracted rescue, but the saga of the miners' experiences below the Earth's surface—and the lives that led them there—has never been heard until now.

For Deep Down Dark, the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Héctor Tobar received exclusive access to the miners and their tales. These thirty-three men came to think of the mine, a cavern inflicting constant and thundering aural torment, as a kind of coffin, and as a church where they sought redemption through prayer. Even while still buried, they all agreed that if by some miracle any of them escaped alive, they would share their story only collectively. Héctor Tobar was the person they chose to hear, and now to tell, that story.

The result is a masterwork or narrative journalism—a riveting, at times shocking, emotionally textured account of a singular human event. Deep Down Dark brings to haunting, tactile life the experience of being imprisoned inside a mountain of stone, the horror of being slowly consumed by hunger, and the spiritual and mystical elements that surrounded working in such a dangerous place. In its stirring final chapters, it captures the profound way in which the lives of everyone involved in the disaster were forever changed.

Media Buzz

PBS News Hour - December 30, 2014