Mile High Mile Deep

First published by Mountain Press in 1970 and in print nearly continuously through several editions by different publishers, Mile High Mile Deep is once again available through Mountain Press. Part memoir, part novel, Richard Kilroy O’Malley’s compelling coming-of-age story captures life in Butte in the 1920s, when the city was a lusty, two-fisted copper camp. Written with sensitivity and feeling, this wonderful book brings to life the Irish, Scandinavians, Slavs, Cornishmen, Syrians, Greeks, Finns, and Italians who scratched a living in the boisterous mining city. First as observers and then as participants, Dick and his friend Frank see and feel the stark power of the mines—a mile high in the blue sky of Montana, but a mile deep, too, in the sweat and gloom of the underground shafts that trapped and destroyed.

RICHARD KILROY O’MALLEY was born of newspaper parents in Portland, Oregon, in 1911, and the family moved to Butte when he was young. He began his own journalistic career in Missoula, Montana, and went on to become an Associated Press war correspondent, roaming the Pacific to the Philippines and onto the decks of the battleship Missouri at the Japanese surrender in 1945. He wrote Mile High Mile Deep while in Europe as a bureau chief for the Associated Press. He retired to Ireland in 1973 but returned to the States to make his home in Sun City, Arizona. He passed away in 1999, survived by his widow, two daughters, six grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren. During a reception held in 2011 in honor of his 100th birthday, one of the speakers referred to the Summer prologue of Mile High Mile Deep as “pure poetry.”