The Underworld: A Novel

by Kevin Canty Narrated by Paul Michael Garcia

Overview

Kevin Canty tells a story based on a real incident that begins with a disastrous fire in an isolated silver-mining town in Idaho in the 1970s. Everyone in town had a friend, lover, brother, or a husband killed in the mine.

The Underworld traces the lives of the handful of survivors and their loved ones-a young widow with twin children, a college student trying to make a life for himself in another town, a lifelong hard-rock miner-as they struggle to come to terms with the loss. It's a tough, hardworking, hard-drinking town, a town of prostitutes and priests and bar fights, but nobody is tough enough to get through this undamaged.

This is a powerful and unforgettable tale about small-town lives and the healing power of love in the midst of suffering.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

01/30/2017
Set in the 1970s, this stunning and deeply moving novel follows a disparate cast of characters in the mining town of Silverton, Idaho, before and after a disastrous fire in the mine that changes their lives. Hope isn’t easy to keep alive in this hard-drinking, hard-living town, and everyone secretly dreams of somehow getting out, even when so few of them actually manage to do so. The story is anchored by David, a college freshman living not far from where he grew up, whose father and brother both work in the mine and who constantly feels the pull of his hometown, and Ann, a frustrated and lost young woman who fantasizes about another life that she believes will always elude her. The two are drawn together following overwhelming personal losses after the accident. What follows is a complex portrayal of trauma, grief, and how to find light in the darkness—quite literally, in fact, in the case of Lyle, an older miner trapped underground after the accident, who is forced to confront the meaning of his life and what might come next if he is saved. The voices of these characters are as memorable as their struggle to keep going in the face of tragedy. (Mar.)

Library Journal

★ 02/01/2017
Set in 1972 and based on a true incident, Canty's tale is a poignant look at the hardworking, hard-living folks in a small Idaho town. They stay despite the poisonous dirt because working at the silver mine is the only good paying job around. Just when David Wright thinks he has escaped by going to college in Montana, he is pulled back to fight the demons he thought he had left behind. A fire in the main mine shaft has unmoored the fragile lives of the town's residents, with over 80 men dead, including David's brother Ray. In her grief, Ray's young widow ignores her children, turns to drink, and throws herself at strange men. David's father, Pat, a mine safety officer, is among the survivors, but now he sits in a daze in his garage listening to the radio. David feels trapped by the accident and by his feelings for a woman named Ann, whose husband was among those killed. Nothing good will come of living here for any of them, but, strangely, the mine disaster gives some a chance to break free. VERDICT In his sixth novel (after Everything), Montana Book Award winner Canty offers a masterly story of heartbreak and struggle against fate and bad luck while heroic themes of love and forgiveness carry this memorable novel. [See Prepub Alert, 10/1/16.]—Donna Bettencourt, Mesa Cty. P.L., Grand Junction, CO

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2016-12-15
Drawing on a true disaster, this brittle, compassionate story tells of a mine fire that devastates a small Idaho town.The silver mine dominates the lives of families in and around Silverton, paying them well and tying them to a life of harsh labor, coarse camaraderie, and heavy drinking. Lyle retired a few years ago but returned to mining, even with $280,000 in the bank and Social Security in the monthly mail. David attends college in Montana, trying to escape, but he's pulled back, feels "the past reaching out to claim him." Ann has tired of the compulsory sex of married life, and the trips to the fertility clinic haven't brought the baby that might improve matters. Canty (Everything, 2010, etc.) focuses on these three lives and touches on several others enduring terrible loss. "The things that have bound the family together are all cut." The mine fire kills 91 men, spares 80, and leaves Lyle and another trapped a mile below the surface of Silverton. It's a small working-class town, where people are stuck and secrets always get out, where the collars are blue and college is rare. Canty has a keen eye for details in this setting and suitably dry, spare prose. A just-rescued miner thinks: "Somebody takes his picture, somebody takes his pulse." A neighborhood is captured with its "cracked sidewalks and chain-link fences." Ann, chasing a new life, a new identity, twice mentions "her name stitched onto the breast" of the blue smock she wears for work in a grocery store. One nit: the quantity of booze consumed may be realistic—"Go to the bar and drink. That's what we do"—but it's also dispiriting, no pun intended, and may sap a reader's sympathy. Canty does a fine job of showing how disaster can lacerate a place or people without utterly destroying hope.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169808414
Publisher:	Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Publication date:	03/07/2017
Edition description:	Unabridged

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