Table of Contents

Prologue
A Colony Of Miners

Chapter One
No Vestige Of A Beginning

Chapter Two
Beneath The Golden Salmon

Chapter Three
A Ponderous Pyramid Of Ruins

Chapter Four
Who Could Live In Such A Hole?

Chapter Five
Greed And The Gilded Age

Chapter Six
Let There Be A Town

Chapter Seven
Lazytown

Chapter Eight
He Was That Young

Chapter Nine
I’m Only A Broken-Down Mucker

Chapter Ten
Jimmy And The Wolf

Chapter Eleven
Silence Profound And Sinister

Chapter Twelve
Moore The Magnificent

Chapter Thirteen
The Darkness Of All Darknesses

Chapter Fourteen
Don’t Worry, Be Happy

Epilogue
Way Down In The Hole


Acknowledgements
Notes
Bibliography
Permission Credits
Index

About the Author

John DeMont is the best-selling and award-winning author of Citizens Irving: The Irvings of New Brunswick and The Last Best Place: Lost in the Heart of Nova Scotia. He has written for many publications, including the Financial Times, Canadian Geographic, The Walrus, and Maclean’s, where he was Atlantic bureau chief for ten years.

Reviews

"There is a history big and small here, heroism and heartbreak, and humanity in all its diversity. Coal Black Heart is an epic tale and a compelling one — John DeMont's prose grabs you by the shirt collar and keeps you turning the pages."
— D'Arcy Jenish, author of Epic Wanderer: David Thompson and the Opening of the West

"John DeMont has written a fascinating global history....Coal Black Heart delivers the goods."
— Atlantic Books Today

"A moving work of memoir, archival research and fireside storytelling."
— Canadian Geographic