[3] About his decision to flee the land of his birth, Lowe recalled: "You do not leave your country, your home, your family, lightly.
[4] Lowe followed his first non-fiction book, A Conspiracy of Brothers about the Port Hope 8 case, which was a national bestseller and winner of the Arthur Ellis Award for Best NonFiction Crime Book in 1989, with a biography of prisoner rights advocate Claire Culhane, "One Woman Army: The Life of Claire Culhane," and then a book on the rush to exploit the Voisey's Bay nickel deposit, "Premature Bonanza: Standoff at Voisey's Bay."
Soon after, Mick began a new chapter: writing a fictional series about Sudbury's mining history called the Nickel Range Trilogy.
[5] Lowe believed that because the CIA waged a "destabilization campaign" against the government of the Marxist President Salvador Allende between 1970 and 1973 after he nationalized the copper mines of Chile owned by American companies, then it was plausible to believe that the CIA would want the nickel mines of northern Ontario under pro-American control.
The second book, "The Insatiable Maw," is set in 1968, and is about health and safety concerns associated with the Copper Cliff Smelter.