So there's a love story at the heart of this, and I think Yonni and Susana wanted me to tell it. So it was very difficult to get divorced. Divorce was illegal in Chile up until 2005 or so. And so Yonni's story of his wife and his mistress is actually, in many ways, kind of a heartwarming story because Yonni was in love with his girlfriend and he actually lived with her. Now that we can stand back several years later and tell their story, it's really about the complete person who went in, and they were flawed individuals. But on the other hand, the book is about these men with these complicated lives. contributed to Yonni's post-traumatic stress after getting out of the mine. It was not a good thing for Yonni Barrios and his wife and his girlfriend to be subjected to this media onslaught - it was terrible, actually. In the case of the married miner with the mistress, Yonni Barrios, already that story had been out in public for years. On his decision to include extremely personal stories about the miners Tobar says it was a 'great honor' to interview these 33 men, who 'lived one of the great adventure stories of the 21st century.' Excerpts of Tobar's conversation with Greene, as well as answers to questions submitted by listeners, are below. He just did such an astonishing job taking all of this information, all of these interviews and making it into a piece of art.' But the real reason that I chose this book was because of Hector and his writing. 'The subtitle says it all,' Patchett tells NPR's David Greene. In the book, journalist Hector Tobar recounts the ordeal of 33 miners who were trapped 2,000 feet underground in Chile for 69 days in 2010.

Patchett, the author of Bel Canto and co-owner of an independent bookstore in Nashville, selected Deep Down Dark: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine, and the Miracle That Set Them Free. In December we asked writer Ann Patchett to select our first book. Your purchase helps support NPR programming.

Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title Deep Down Dark Subtitle The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine, and the Miracle That Set Them Free Author Hector Tobar

Deep Down Dark by Héctor Tobar