The sensationalism and hysteria of the attempt to rescue Floyd Collins from the cave where he was trapped in early 1925 generated America’s first true media spectacle and one of the seminal events of the century.
The crowds that gathered outside Sand Cave in Kentucky turned the rescue site into a carnival. Collins’ situation was front-page news throughout the country, ranked the third largest news story between two World Wars. Hourly bulletins interrupted radio programs, and even Congress recessed to hear the latest word.
With a new epilogue revealing additional information about the Floyd Collins story that has come to light since the book was first published, Trapped! is both a tense adventure and a brilliant historical recreation of the past.
Robert K. Murray is professor emeritus and former chairman of the department of history at Pennsylvania State University.
Roger W. Brucker is an American cave explorer and author of books about caves. He helped create the Cave Research Foundation, which set new standards for cave exploration, and coauthored The Longest Cave about Kentucky’s Mammoth Cave.
Joe Barrett began his acting career at the age of five in the basement of his family's home in upstate New York. He has gone on to play many stage roles, both on and off-Broadway, and in regional theaters from Los Angeles, Houston, and St. Louis to Washington DC, San Francisco, and Portland, Maine. He has appeared in films and television, both prime time and late night, and in hundreds of television and radio commercials. Joe has narrated over two hundred audiobooks. He has been an Audie Award finalist eight times, and his narration of Gun Church by Reed Farrel Coleman won the 2013 Audie Award for Original Work. AudioFile magazine has granted Joe fourteen Earphones Awards, including for James Salter's All That Is and Donald Katz's Home Fires. Regarding Joe's narration of John Irving's A Prayer For Owen Meany, AudioFile said, "This moving book comes across like a concerto... with a soloist-Owen's voice-rising from the background of an orchestral narration." Joe is married to actor Andrea Wright, and together they have four very grown children.