FIRE IN THE HOLE BEHIND THE SCENES Fire in the Hole was my first venture beyond Young Adult and children's books. Thinking back, the idea for the novel must have been perking in the back of my head for several years because when I started to write, the story simply took off. As a fan of historical nonfiction, I had read former Senator and presidential candidate George McGovern's landmark The Great Coalfield War, based on his doctoral dissertation. And I'd been struck by the part women had played in the terrible strike that took place in the southern coalfields of Colorado in 1914. Certainly, the drama of the strike, which became known internationally as the Ludlow Massacre, was tailor-made for fiction. But how much of a part women would play in my story, I wasn't sure. And I turned to research to give me some leads. The early 20th century was filled with infinite possibilities. Blast furnaces rose where farmhouses once had been. Immigrants flooded the country, eager for a part in the American dream. But while the newly minted millionaires danced the nights away, the men who worked for them died in mine cave-ins and black lung disease. Enter unions. Initially, when miners thought of a union, the old craft unions such as the American Federation of Labor came to mind. But as mining became more perilous and the companies did nothing to protect the workers, the name of the game changed and the hard-line IWW (International Workers of the World) and the UMWA (United Mine Workers of America) emerged. It was the latter that chose Colorado's southern coalfields as its biggest test. Battle lines were drawn. No detail was overlooked. Spies were culled from the union members. Tents were brought in to house the miners and their families. A small allowance was provided for food. And on September 23, 1913—an unseasonably cold, rainy day—12, 000 miners and their families, speaking 23 different languages, walked out of the coal camps. A month passed, then another. The idle men grew increasingly impatient. It was up the women to keep the lid on. But for how long? And with that my story opens.