Dylan knew that the boiler was about to blow apart and that if he didn't act fast, he and the others in the pump room at the #3 mine would all die. The engine operator was panicking but had fallen in his haste to escape a scalding death, so Dylan lifted his heavy shovel as high as his twelve-year-old arms could manage and swung it in a fast arc to the thundering machine. It may kill him, but he had to try. Even as the shovel's steel head slammed into the machine, it would set in motion a series of events that would shape his entire life.