Deep Down Dark

"Yonni Barrios places his ear to the stone. "It was like listening to the inside of a seashell,"he will say later. "You hear nothing and you hear everything, you can imagine an ocean rolling inside that shell, and then you take away your ear and realize it's just an illusion." 

Hector Tobar 

Deep Down Dark

Every once in a while there are events that are so big, that resonate with so many people in the far corners of the world that they they spawn stories, frenzies of newspaper articles, international headlines everyday for months, eventually a book deal that will turn into a movie. I saw the trailer to what will eventually be the movie that this is based on, and it made me cry. If a three minute reel could elicit that level of emotion from me, I figured that I should read the book.

Deep Down Dark, by Hector Tobar, is the story of the thirty-three miners that were trapped underground when the San Jose mine in Chile collapsed in 2010. The miners survived underground for sixty-nine days, seventeen of the days unsupported to the outside world. The book mixes together the stories of the miners experiences underground, the rescue crews first searching for signs of survival and then finding a means of rescuing the men, and the family members feelings as they waited at Camp Esperanza for their loved ones to come back to the surface. Brilliantly research, Tobar looks in depth at their experience both before and after their rescue.

This book was brilliant. Well researched and well written, Tobar captures the experience well and tries to explain all facets of what the men trapped underground experienced for those sixty-nine days, and he goes above and beyond following them to where they are now and how they cope with the trauma that they experienced. He examines all of the stories with impartiality (which is amazing considering how much thirty three people, in close quarters for a long period of time under stress, might rub on each other), and presents the story in an extremely dignified way.

The story, itself, is fantastic. Considering that most mine accidents of this magnitude are fatal, the fact that not one person was seriously injured is nothing short of miraculous, which is what many of the miners themselves thought it was... a miracle. This was the longest that anyone had continuously spend underground and the collective effort that was used to keep them alive and to bring them to the surface is amazing. I remembered when this happened and it was hailed as a triumph of the human spirit, an example of what we could do if we put our minds to it. It is a wonderful story.

There is a darker side to it that I couldn't help but notice. The mine was know for being unstable and unsafe, and all of the workers took jobs there because they needed the money, yet no one cared enough to invest the money to stabilize the mine and keep the workers safe. I love this story, I love how it represents how far human ingenuity can go when we work together, but I can't help feel like its to little to late. This accident happened because people were cutting corners for profit, instead of caring about the workers that mine the product. This negligence is terrible. It shows a lack of respect for the miners, as well as a carelessness towards people that is heartbreaking. And its not just something we see in foreign countries. We see it when ladders are set too high, and rickety stairs aren't repaired after complaints have been made. We see it in a callous disregard to the needs of employees here in the US. If just a little more care was taken, harm could be avoided.

This is a wonderful book; a truly magnificent story. Well researched and well written with wonderful attention to detail (his translations from English to Spanish, and vice versa, add so much to the book) I highly recommend it to anyone who liked Unbroken or Lone Survivor. A great read.