One of the things I've known since I was a child is that my grandfather was injured in a mining accident in a Butte, Mt, copper mine when my dad was 8. By the time my dad reached the age of 9, my grandfather was dead.I knew that Silver Bow County never gave my grandmother a death certificate. She got the verdict, the tally of the votes from the coroner's jury, just like the return of the coroner's inquest described in Rose. The result was the same: nothing the employer could have done that would have prevented the loss.I knew my grandmother kept telling my dad and his older brother "You're not going down that hole!" As soon as the two of them graduated from high school, she packed up and moved to Chicago, not knowing how she was going to support herself, her sons or her daughter. But she kept her two sons from going down that hole.I've been to the Illinois coal mine exhibit at the Museum of Science & Industry in Chicago, several times, both as a child and as a adult. Took my daughter and her cousin down there a couple of years ago. I've gone down that three story descent in that fully enclosed cage from the main floor of the museum to the simulated mine in the sub-basement, knowing that in a real mine there were no walls on that elevator. I've walked around the two fifty-yard, twenty foot high tunnels, heard the lecture about the tools and the head lamps and how and why the head lamps came to be the way they are today.Martin Cruz Smith writes fiction like Melville. He makes the setting of his novels, the day-to-day lives of his characters as much a part of the story as the plot and the characters themselves. Unlike Melville, he writes no extended chapters, intersecting the narrative, to fill out the setting. Smith weaves that part, seamlessly, into his narrative.I knew from reading earlier reviews of Rose on this site, and from reading other Smith novels, that I'd read a bit about mines. I didn't pick up Rose to read about mines; I picked up Rose because I've read several of Smith's novels. I was just looking for a good story. Wasn't disappointed. Back to Smith's story: 76 fictional miners died in the fictional fire sparked by the not-so-fictional headlamps in the fictional mine in late 19th Century England.Every time I go to Butte, my relatives take me to Walkerville, at the top of the hill, to see the Walkerville Monument. I decided to Google "Walkerville mining disaster," not to double check Smith, but to refresh my memory, to recall why Butte has never forgotten. Google describes it this way:"In the Granite Mountain/Speculator Mine disaster of June 8, 1917, an electric cable was being lowered into the Granite Mountain mine as part of a fire safety system. At this time, the Butte, Montana copper mines were at full wartime production. When the cable fell and was damaged, a foreman (approximately 2,500 feet below the surface) with a carbide lamp went to inspect the damage, and the oil-soaked cloth insulation on the cable was ignited by the flame from his lamp. The fire quickly climbed the cable, and then turned the shaft into a chimney, igniting the timbers in the shaft."168 miners died in the ensuing blaze, most from asphyxia. Some of the deceased did not die immediately; they survived for a day or two in the tunnels underground. Notes were written by some while they waited to be rescued. A few managed to barricade themselves within bulkheads in the mine and were found after as long as 55 hours. A strike ensued as a result of the disaster."It remains the most deadly event ever in underground hard rock mining in the USA." I had never paid much attention to the Walkerville Monument until I read Rose. Neither the Chicago museum exhibit nor anything else in my experience conveyed the reality of "going down that hole." I didn't anticipate the impact Rose would have on me. I guess, for me, it's somewhat personal. I finally figured out what it means to "go down that hole." I wouldn't last a week.