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A female mining engineer (Rita) is in town, as is the standard practice of the parent company sending new engineers to gain experience working in the mine. Due to superstition ingrained in local custom, she is not allowed in the mine unlike the male engineers. She vows to be the first woman in the
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for college students. His father, who although he wanted to see his son grow up to be a mining engineer is fervently anti-union, and his mother, who swore her sons would never work in a coal mine, are both against this. He defies the wishes of his parents to take the job. His father in response
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As the race goes on over the summer, so does the investigation of Hickam Sr. As the investigation unfolds, more mysteries are revealed, including the identity of a disabled worker still secretly on the coal mine's payroll, and the fate of the Hickam family's pet fox 'Parkyacarcass'. In the end,
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mine, and tries to get young Hickam to sneak her in one night. They are caught and this fails. Meanwhile, she unveils a plan to replace all the track inside the mine. Two teams will work from opposite ends of the mine replacing track, one from
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Christian (Johnny Basso). The work becomes a race and a contest between the two teams, with the other miners placing bets on whether
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Hickam Sr. is cleared, the Hickam family is reunited, and Rita is allowed in the mine, but the
Coalwood team loses the contest by a hair.
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53:Learn how and when to remove these messages
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