FROM THE BOOK JACKET:

World-famous since the mid-1800s, Howe’s Cave had been modernized for visitors in 1927-29 with an elevator entrance, clean paths, and electric lights.  A grand reopening on Decoration Day, 1929 made Howe Caverns, Inc. one of upstate New York’s most popular tourist destinations.

As a college-age tour guide during the Seventies, author Dana Cudmore faced this question often enough during the hundreds of tours he conducted through the famous caverns.  Unknown to most, the answer is yes.  The Cave Electrician’s Widow delves into that tragic story and the courtroom battle that sought to redress the deaths.

Less than a year after the cave was reopened, two of the new corporation’s employees died in the cave under baffling circumstances in the early morning hours of April 24, 1930. They collapsed near the postcard-worthy formation, The Bell of Moscow.

When the two men failed to return that morning, a third was sent into the cave to find why.  This 25-year-old tour guide returned alone minutes later, warning of “poisonous gases,” and then collapsed, later recovering in an Albany hospital.

At 5 a.m. that same morning, 7½ tons of dynamite knocked 60,000 tons of limestone from the hillside at the old cement quarry, just southeast of the cave. Had fumes from the blast found their way through the maze of caverns’ passages and killed the men more than a mile away? Or had it loosened dangerous gases lurking in the cave for eons?

The Cave Electrician’s Widow: The Tragedy at Howe Caverns & Courtroom Battle for Justice is part David vs. Goliath; part mystery, part courtroom drama, part travelogue through the fascinating underground realm of the caverns, and much more. 

From Purple Mountain Press/NYSbooks.com.