Book a dream come true for reporter

If Michael Shea had his druthers, his son Mick would take his nose out of a book and mine silver underground next to his dad. It’s dirty work, but manly and respectable, even if miners can’t finish a sentence without coughing a few times in the middle.

But bigger problems push Mick’s dreams of college to the back of Michael’s mind. His wife is struggling with a pregnancy, union miners blast the anti-union Bunker Hill Mine with dynamite and most Silver Valley men, including 14-year-old Mick, are arrested, fed from pig troughs and held indefinitely.

Want to know more? History books tell the gritty details of the 1899 Bunker Hill Mine explosion and the resulting martial law in the valley, but few offer the tale with the wide-eyed, heart-pounding style in Mary Cronk Farrell’s new historical fiction book for children, “Fire in the Hole!”

“Fire in the Hole!” “fairly brims with details and mining history,” Kay Weisman of the American Library Association writes in her book review. “It’s a good choice for historical fiction buffs and readers studying mining history and labor unions.”

Mary smiles about the reviews. “Fire in the Hole!” is her first novel for children and it was published by Clarion Books of New York, which publishes Mary’s idol, Katherine Paterson, winner of the 1978 Newbery Medal for her children’s book “Bridge to Terabithia.”

“My dream is to write like her,” Mary says.

Mary was a news reporter for KXLY-TV in Spokane in the 1980s, then for KIRO in Seattle for three years. The process of weaving together news stories for public consumption delighted her but never overshadowed her dream to write children’s books.

“I was an avid reader as a child,” she says. “I remember the feeling of reading the best book. I want to be able to create that feeling.”

Mary and her family settled in Spokane in the mid-1990s. She cut back her work schedule to raise her three children, Brandon, Monica and Dylan. She planned to return to work full-time when Dylan, her youngest, reached age 5. Instead, she started writing and discovered she had a lot to learn.

“Writing for children isn’t simple,” Mary says. “You write from a child’s point of view and can’t preach or teach.”

Mary read, attended workshops and joined a group of children’s authors in Spokane. She was working diligently on her first idea when an opportunity arose to join four other authors in a book, “Daughters of the Desert: Stories of Remarkable Women from Christian, Jewish and Muslim Traditions.” The collection of 18 stories of spiritual journeys was published last year.

While she worked on the collaborative project, Mary read a news story that mentioned the 1899 Bunker Hill Mine explosion. She was intrigued and saw her next writing project. She’d reported on silver mine closures in the 1980s and knew the region. Mary began researching in old newspapers, at the library and at museums in Kellogg and Wallace. She collected details about the lay of the land, items like washboards used at the time, mining practices and much more.

Mary tells the story from the perspective of Mick, who prefers reading and a job at the local newspaper to laboring underground in the mines with his father, Michael, a union man. Bunker Hill angers union workers by not recognizing their union. Workers strike, load a train with dynamite and are partying when dynamite demolishes Bunker Hill’s concentrator. Martial law follows and soldiers, mostly black, arrive to arrest nearly every Silver Valley man, including Mick and Michael.

While they’re imprisoned in a chicken coop indefinitely, tragedy hits the Shea family. Mick’s story is so compelling that it pulls readers effortlessly through the 167-page book.

Mary rewrote most of the story after her writers’ group read it. Four editors rejected it before Clarion called her with good news more than a year after the publishing company received its copy.

“I was over the moon,” Mary says, beaming. “My dream had come true.”

Clarion wrapped “Fire in the Hole!” in an eye-grabbing red paper cover with an impressive wood-cut print of miners at work, fiery blasts, metal newsprint type and ore cars on railroad tracks. The book costs $15 and is available in most bookstores.

Mary marvels that her gamble on her writing skills paid off.

“This is my career for the foreseeable future,” she says, grinning. “It’s very gratifying to have my faith in myself confirmed.”