This Rare Earth by Jeremy Thomas Gilmer
Building the Dams, Mines, and Megaprojects that Run our World
Across the world, mining companies dig deep in the earth for minerals and elements deemed essential to our modern world: gold, lithium, iron ore, cobalt, copper, diamonds, to name a few. For twenty-five years, Jeremy Thomas Gilmer has been on the ground at these mine sites, working for some of the biggest companies, witness to both beauty and horror. His travels have taken him from the deadly cold of the Arctic to the suffocating heat of equatorial Africa, to places where, if the reptiles don’t kill you, the armed militants might.
“In This Rare Earth, Gilmer gently takes the reader on journeys to places most of us will never see, weaving a tapestry of the sights, sounds, and smells with his Irish poet’s voice.”
Through all these years, Gilmer has met and befriended a vast network of locals, engineers, miners, and technicians who make it possible for the cell phones in our hands and the engagement rings on our fingers. For the cars we drive and the vast network of international trade that supports our economies. He’s witnessed tragedy, poverty, violence, and the piercingly sweet beauty to be found despite the ravages of man’s insatiable desire for more.
In This Rare Earth, Gilmer gently takes the reader on journeys to places most of us will never see, weaving a tapestry of the sights, sounds, and smells with his Irish poet’s voice. His power to see the rich beauty of every landscape, from jungle to barren ice field, is astounding. But no more so than his ability to let the reader experience the brilliant sunsets, hear the ring of children’s laughter, and feel the weight of an impending storm through his dazzling and virtuosic prose. Gilmer brings a deft touch to blending technical details on what might be a dry subject with the human stories surrounding them. Each essay is another mine site, another technical project, another chance to learn about people, cultures, and histories as most of us have never seen them.
Subtly yet powerfully, Gilmer asks the hard questions: what are we doing to the only home we all have, and how can we save it and ourselves from the coming global storm? His point is not to feed us the answers, but to stimulate our own thought and consideration. And make no mistake, the storm is coming. Never an apologist for the industry which has given him a career, Gilmer is candid about its impact on the world and the need for teams of people, like himself, who work countless hours in the most difficult of situations, to mitigate that impact. The world demands the riches buried deep in the earth, oblivious to the consequences of our need for the newest of everything. Gilmer spells it out, a teacher with immense wisdom built of experience, humour and incredible sanguinity. That he is not jaded by the environmental horrors he has witnessed, still takes a boyish delight in huge dump trucks and helicopter rides, is almost miraculous. That he has shared his life and experiences is a gift.
Part memoir, part commentary on the mining industry, part philosophical meditation on the world and its cultures. This Rare Earth is a book which can be devoured, but perhaps should be savoured like a fine whisky, slowly and with much thoughtful contemplation.
About the Author
Jeremy Thomas Gilmer is a writer of short fiction and nonfiction. He has been long listed for the CBC Canada Writes Short Story Prize, won the inaugural Short Story Day Africa Flash Fiction Prize, and was selected as the writer-in-residence at the KiRA residency in 2018. Gilmer grew up in Nigeria, Northern Ireland, and Canada, and has lived and worked in over forty countries. He lives in Saint John, New Brunswick.
About the Reviewer
Heather McBriarty is the author of the non-fiction account of the First World War, Somewhere in Flanders: Letters from the Front and a novel of the “Great War” Amid the Splintered Trees. She is a blogger, reviewer and served as a juror for the 2023 Atlantic Book Awards. By day, she is a Medical Radiation Technologist, doting grandmother, and avid sailor. She lives by the sea in historic Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada.
Book Details
Publisher : Véhicule Press
Publication date : June 12 2025
Language : English
Print length : 230 pages
ISBN-10 : 1550656791
ISBN-13 : 978-1550656794