Fire and Brimstone Cover The worst hard-rock mining disaster in American history began a half hour before midnight on June 8, 1917, when fire broke out in the North Butte Mining Company’s Granite Mountain shaft. Sparked more than two thousand feet below ground, the fire spewed flames, smoke, and poisonous gas through a labyrinth of underground tunnels.

Within an hour, more than four hundred men would be locked in a battle to survive. Within three days, one hundred and sixty-four of them would be dead.
   
Fire and Brimstone recounts the remarkable stories of both the men
below ground and their families above, focusing on two groups of miners
who made the incredible decision to entomb themselves to escape the gas.
While the disaster is compelling in its own right, Fire and Brimstone also tells a
far broader story—striking in its contemporary relevance. Butte, Montana, on
the eve of the North Butte disaster, was a volatile jumble of antiwar protest, an
abusive corporate master, seething labor unrest, divisive ethnic tension, and
radicalism both left and right. It was a powder keg lacking only a spark, and
the mine fire would ignite strikes, murder, ethnic and political witch hunts,
occupation by federal troops, and ultimately a battle over presidential power.
REVIEWS

From Publishers Weekly
"In this compelling tale, Punke recounts the grim details of the worst hard-rock mining disaster in United States history...If the horrifying account of the fire and the trapped men is the heart of this yarn, its soul is Punke's historical contextualization of the event.  He paints a vivid picture of a city, state and nation in the grip of industrial monopolies...Like the hardworking miners he writes about, Punke gets the job done."

Booklist
"[W]hen a shaft fire broke out on June 8, 1917, it unleashed a variety of pent-up hatreds that had festered in Butte for months, if not years.  Initially, the fire trapped more than 400 men beneath the surface.  One hundred sixty-four people died, and Punke's recounting of the struggle of the others to survive is tense, exciting, and even inspiring.  A lawyer, novelist, and Montana resident, he tells an equally interesting story of the ethnic conflicts, anti-war protests, and labor warfare that quickly exploded and ravaged the area for the next three years.  This is a timely work, with the recent spate of fatal mine disasters reminding us that deep-shaft mining remains a dangerous profession."

From Kirkus
"Enlightning saga of tough men, tough times, persistent corruption and greed."

From William “Gatz” Hjortsberg
“Michael Punke’s engrossing history of the 1917 North Butte mining disaster reads with the immediacy of today’s tragic headlines.  Fire and Brimstone combines a driving narrative energy with the authority of detail only the most careful research can reveal."

Peter Stark
Correspondent, Outside magazine and author of At the Mercy of the River
“Like the North Butte fire itself, Michael Punke’s account races down a dark tunnel in our nation's history.  It is a gripping read, both as a heart-pounding story of tragedy and heroism in the mines, and a deeper reflection -- so relevant today -- on how fear-mongering, parading under the name of patriotism, can pervert our nation’s most cherished values.”
EXCERPT

In the first two hours after the fire, North Butte officials held out hope that most miners would escape through adjoining properties.  Urgent telephone calls went out to the other mines as the officials attempted to establish a head count of those who had escaped.  Sometime between 2:00 and 3:00 a.m., the timekeeper gave an initial report:  204 souls were still missing.  "Scores of men," they suddenly knew, were "trapped in the lower workings."

Upon hearing the report, L.D. Frink, superintendent of the North Butte mines, turned solemnly to the other men in the room.  The fire, he told them, looked "nothing short of a calamity."