It was the summer of 1983. Barbara Kingsolver had a day job as ascientific writer spends her weekends cutting her teeth as a freelancejournalist when she landed an assignment. Her mission: was to cover the PhelpsDodge mine strike.Overthe year that followed Kingsolver stood with those miners and their families,increasingly engaged and heartbroken. She recorded stories of striking minersand their stunningly courageous wives, sisters and daughters. She saw rightsshe'd taken for granted denied to people she had learned to care about, asthey cried out to a wide world that either refused to believe what washappening to them, or didn't care, or simply could not know.Thisbook is the true story of the families who held the line, and of Kingsolver'scommitment to tell the story of the women and girls who discovered themselvesin their fight to keep their families from [...] a story about the sparks that fly when the flint of force strikes againsthuman mettle