Darkness Lit by Heroes: The Granite Mountain-Speculator Mine Disaster of 1917

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.