An amazing story about a remarkable rescue

Informs, excites and you might shed a tear or two along the way

THE BOYS IN THE CAVE Matt Gutman Loot.co.za (R289) WILLIAM MORROW

ON June 23, 2018, 12 young Thai soccer players and their coach entered the Tham Luang cave in Northern Thailand, as they had done on other occasions. But this time proved to be traumatically different.

Monsoon rains and rising water levels in the caves trapped them in darkness for 10 days before being located by a pair of British cave divers.

In The Boys in the Cave, ABC News chief national correspondent Matt Gutman reveals the behind-the-scenes drama of the remarkable rescue that saw all the boys and their coach safely brought to the surface unharmed.

Their plight and the rescue are arguably one of the biggest news stories of the year. Gutman’s account traces the boys’ initial journey into the cave, the furious search and neardrownings in the cave’s tunnels, the tragic death of a Thai Navy SEAL, and finally the successful rescue. Through dozens of interviews, he examines how a mission without precedent required the use of bold untested methods.

The Boys in the Cave reveals all the players, the unsung heroes who, working together in a oncein-a-lifetime display of international co-operation, converged on the cave in Thailand’s “Golden Triangle” to pull off one of the most audacious rescues ever attempted.

The label “courageous hero” could apply to almost all the book’s cast of characters: coach Ek, the 24-yearold coach of the 13-and-under “Wild Boar” squad – a former Buddhist monk, with the skills to look after the boys’ emotional well-being during their ordeal; the array of extraordinary cave experts whose derring-do was instrumental to the rescue.

If, like me, you retain memories of the adrenalin involved with doing the Adventure Tour of the Cango Caves, you may be able to go some way to appreciating the skills and courage of these astonishingly brave and skilled men. This is a story that may have had a different ending.

When he was approached to write this book, it was five days after the rescue had ended. The rescue was so unprecedented that there was as yet no frame of reference for it. That necessitated a near-absolute reliance on first-person accounts and the co-operation of the interviewees.

Gutman has done a remarkable job of taking the multitude of diverse facts and weaving them into a spellbinding “I couldn’t put it down” work of nonfiction. As recent as one’s memory of the events, the book manages to inform, excite and flabbergast and you might even shed a tear or two along the way.

The Boys in the Cave is Gutman’s first book. Its cover carries this subtitle: “Deep inside the impossible rescue in Thailand”.

It is one of my top reads of the year.