Three men. Three feet of space. Fourteen days of darkness.

In August 1963, the earth swallowed the Oneida No. 2 mine in Sheppton, Pennsylvania—and buried three miners 300 feet underground in a chamber barely large enough to hold them. No light. No food. No way out. Above them, a town of 312 people refused to let them die.

What followed became one of the first disasters broadcast to a watching world. Howard Hughes flew in to lead a drilling operation that defied the limits of 1960s technology. President Kennedy sent a telegram that was read aloud down a six-inch borehole—the only thread connecting two trapped men to the surface. Rising water threatened to finish what the collapse had started. And behind a wall of rubble, a third miner tapped signals in the dark that no one could be certain they heard.

On the surface, two women—Anna Fellin and Eva Bova—waged a battle of their own: demanding answers from the mining company, building a legal case in the middle of a rescue, and fighting to make sure this disaster would be the last one the industry could ignore.

300 Feet Below Daylight is the story of what happens when ordinary people are asked to endure the unendurable—and the extraordinary lengths to which others will go to bring them home. Based on a decade of firsthand interviews, archival research, and personal journals gathered by the author's late brother, Captain John Dailey, this is the true story behind one of the most remarkable rescues in American history.

Some stories survive because someone refused to let them be forgotten.