Afterdamp

Following his father's death at the railway yard, young John Rossing leaves the family farm in Colorado to find work that can support his mother. His search draws him into the harsh, hazardous trade of underground mining in Colorado and Utah during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Along the way, John forms bonds of friendship, romance, and shared faith with immigrants who crossed the ocean to labor in the mines. The story takes him deep underground and into the mining camps of Winter Quarters and Castlegate, sites of two of the most significant disasters in American mining history.

John is an invented character, but the incidents and the other people who appear in the book are historically accurate. Through him, readers see the Western mining towns of that era and the workers whose labor helped power the growth of American industry.

The author, R. Craig Johnson, is a Utah native and attorney who has served as an international leader in the mining industry. He wrote the novel to commemorate the early miners who lost their lives while working every day to build the nation's prosperity.