Winner of the 2018 High Plains Book Award A Darkness Lit by Heroes is the tale of the biggest hard rock mining accident in America. Based on 600 pages of eye-witness testimony that was lost for 90 years, Ammons puts readers directly into the Granite Mountain-Speculator Mine in Butte, Montana as a normal shift spiraled into disaster. Written from the miners' perspective, A Darkness Lit by Heroes is about the resilience of the human spirit, the love built from the bonds of shared danger, and the ability of people to rise up when all hope is gone and light even the greatest darkness. "Ammons plunges the reader down the mine shafts where the nation's worst hard-rock mining disaster left 168 miners dead. The effect is a lyrical evocation of those involved as Ammons brings the history to vivid life." -Montana: Magazine of Western History "Ammons plunges the reader down the mine shafts wehre the nation's worst hard-rock mining disaster left 168 miners dead. The effect is a lyrical evocation of those invovled as Ammons brings the history to vivid life." -- Montana: Magazine of Western History