The fluorspar mines of Newfoundland take a heavy toll in human life. And the tragedy there is repeated around the world in mining and other industries, unrecognized, ignored, denied, covered up - or dulled and made distant by neat columns of impersonal statistics. But Dying Hard doesn't use statistics. Instead, it presents ten unembellished accounts of individual agony, poverty and physical ruin - ten stories that could be ten thousand and that owe their gruesome reality to the appalling, almost criminal irresponsibility of modern corporate industry and the blind indifference of modern legislation. Stark simplicity and raw emotional impact endow these accounts with a nearly poetic eloquence that can only stoke the fires of outrage they are sure to spark. Exerting an overpowering hold on the reader that is rare in any kind of book, Dying Hard is a shocking and indignant challenge to the conscience and humanity not just of Canada but of all nations, an outraged cry of protest and concern on behalf of workers victimized alike throughout the modern world.