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 Synopsis from Bethany House Publishers:  Chosen by Publisher's Weekly as One of the Top 50 Novels of 2004

Winner of the Christy Award, presented by the Christian Bookseller Association to honor the best in Christian fiction.

Chosen as one of Booklist's Top 10 Christian Novels of the Year (from Sept. 2003-Sept. 2004)

 A Boy Afraid of the Dark; a Man Afraid of the Light…

Deep in the earth, brilliant clusters of quartz crystals lie hidden in fissures and crevices—"pyramid-tipped spires huddled together like a miniature city, cracking the light into a thousand rainbow shards...salted with pinpoints of iron pyrite, glittering like tiny stars." But such treasures can only be found in fractured, unstable, dangerous earth—places miners simply call "bad ground."

Jeremy Prine, a fearful seventeen-year-old boy, needs to grow up, and fast. When Jeremy's mother dies, he finds himself seeking help from the unlikeliest of people--his estranged uncle, a badly scarred hard-rock miner. Uncle Aiden is a bitter recluse who, when he's not "making hole" underground, stays holed up in his apartment on the south side of Atlanta. But Jeremy's presence—and the memory he evokes—changes everything for both of them.

Insightful and profoundly stirring, abounding in warmth and humor, sifts the tough, gritty realities of life and work to uncover a man’s deep need for love, the bonds of family and brotherhood, the quest for meaning, and the longing for redemption.