The Courageous Series: Book 1
Publication Date: October 3, 2023
Out of the Darkness was inspired by the true story of a nineteenth-century child coal miner who rose out of the ashes of poverty and tragedy to reach for his dreams.
At age seven, Tom Wright follows in the footsteps of his father and grandfather before him into England’s mid-nineteenth-century Yorkshire coal mines. He struggles with childhood fears, working twelve-hour days, six days a week, in the darkest depths of a dangerous coal mine. That is until disaster strikes, taking the lives of his boyhood friends in one of England’s most tragic accidents in its long coal mining history. Devastated, Tom is determined to change his fate laid out for him by the tyrannical system of industrial slavery.
This is the fast-moving story of a young boy overcoming the iron-fisted rule of the massively wealthy lord of the land, who not only owns and rules much of South Yorkshire, its coal mines, and the villages the mining families live in, but the mortgage on their very lives. With the help of his brilliant, passionate, self-educated mother, Tom rises above his beginnings despite the tyranny of his lordship’s brutal psychopathic enforcer and a society fostering the oppression of the working class.
We follow Tom into adulthood, on his path to a brilliant career, through the tragedy of yet another of the largest industrial disasters in England’s history, in his fight against child labor, and his love affairs with two strong-willed, determined women. And finally, we see his family’s escape to America to pursue their dreams in book two of The Courageous Series. Theirs has become a vast family legacy, including their seven-year-old great, great, great, great grandson Cole, pictured on the front cover of this book.
While the Industrial Revolution brought forth a number of innovations in England, it also contributed to mass suffering amongst the laborers.
Author David Jacinto tells the story of the Wright family buried in letters, artifacts, and other memorabilia from his ancestors. As the first book in the Courageous Series, Out of the Darkness showcases the family’s struggles in a well-researched piece of historical fiction.
Young Tommy Wright sets out for the coal mine at age 7, just like his father and grandfather. During the early to mid-1800s, these small countryside communities became lucrative sources of income for wealthy landowners who provided deplorable housing and seemed uninterested in safe working conditions. Seeing the experience through a child’s eyes is horrifying.
When an accident shakes Tommy’s courage, his mother pushes him to use his skills in a better way so he has options. He builds a reputation for himself as being very mechanically inclined, making him in high demand for mine equipment repairs.
The author uses the family’s story to point out the value of opportunity. Without his mother urging him to do something other than be a coal miner, Tommy very likely would have either been injured in a mining accident or succumbed to one of the many health conditions attributed to coal mining.
Tommy’s eventual path to America is full of hardship and heartbreak, but his determination to carry out his mother’s plan for him keeps him focused. The author provides a tidy ending to the first installment as members of the Wright family are on a ship to carve out a new life in America.
Out of the Darkness showcases the danger of coal mines and one family’s desire to make a choice that eventually impacts future generations.
David Jacinto was born into a family living on the wrong side of the tracks and has been a storyteller ever since. He was the first in his extended family to attend college, and as a student athlete at one of the most prestigious universities in the country, he received his degree in civil engineering. He went on to serve as a president of SM Engineering Company, held leadership roles in multiple national and international companies along the west coast of California, and was on the board of directors for a few more. He was also commandeered by the State of California on special assignment as chief engineer to help rescue California’s three major utilities on the verge of bankruptcy during the highly publicized, 300-billion-dollar energy crisis in 2001.
David has had numerous speaking engagements over his successful career, frequently interjecting colorful, fascinating, and humorous stories of his life experiences. Some of these stories are drawn from his ill-spent youth, some from his many business successes, and some from family experiences. But all delivered with the greatest respect for the opportunities America has afforded him and a thankfulness to those fallen leaves from the family tree of immigrants who made it all possible.
Despite his business successes, he supposes his greatest achievements have been to convince the fetching Anne Gray to become his wife, the good fortune to be a part of the lives of his four wonderful children, their wives and husband, and the blessing to be Papa J to thirteen near-perfect grandchildren.
