Apprehensive about spending the summer in Washington State with his Aunt Ethel when his parents get an overseas job, twelve-year-old Josh soon finds adventure when he meets the ghost of a coal miner.
In 1917, Thomas, a thirteen-year-old coal miner seeking his missing brother, James, joins the Claykickers, who tunnel beneath the battlefields of the Western Front as they learn to be men.
Gracie Pearl has until sundown to find some gold to pay the rent to Mr. Bigglebottom, or he will take back the family gold mine and force her to marry him.
Tells the story of the 1909 coal mine disaster in Cherry, Illinois, that killed hundreds of men, left more than four hundred children fatherless, inspired the first worker's compensation laws, and helped bring about changes in child labor practices