"I went to the Vulcan mine for the first time in 2005. I still wonder how I ended up there, what pushed me to go to Valea Jiului - I knew no one, had never seen a miner, hadn't owned a television when miners marched on Bucharest in 1992, my father wasn't a miner, I'd never lived in a mining region. Something pushed me to go to Valea Jiului." The history of mining in the valley begins long before, and this book follows its slow unravelling.