The Day
the Earth Caved In is an unprecedented and riveting
account of the nation’s worst mine fire, beginning on Valentine’s
Day, 1981, when twelve-year-old Todd Domboski plunged through
the earth in his grandmother’s backyard in Centralia, Pennsylvania.
In astonishing detail, award-winning journalist Joan Quigley,
the granddaughter of Centralia miners, ushers readers into the
dramatic world of the underground blaze -- from the media circus
and back-room deal-making spawned in the wake of Todd’s sudden
disappearance, to the inner lives of every day Centralians who
fought a government that wouldn’t listen.
Drawing on interviews with key participants and exclusive new
research, Quigley paints unforgettable portraits of Centralia and
its residents, from Tom Larkin, the short-order cook and ex-hippie
who rallied the activists, to Helen Womer, a bank teller who galvanized
the opposition, denying the fire’s existence even as toxic fumes
invaded her home. Here, too, we see the failures of major political
and government figures, from Centralia’s congressman, “Dapper”
Dan Flood, a former actor who later resigned in the wake of corruption
allegations, to James Watt, a former lawyer-lobbyist for the mining
industry, who became President Reagan’s controversial interior
secretary.
Like Jonathan Harr’s A Civil Action, The
Day the Earth Caved In is a seminal investigation
of individual rights, corporate privilege, and governmental indifference
to the powerless. Exposing facts in prose that reads like fiction,
Quigley shows us what happens to a small community when disaster
strikes, and what it means to call someplace home
|
