About the Book
After
several weeks of bitter cold, January 12, 1888, began as
an exceptionally warm and inviting winter day on the Great
Plains. Farmers were already out tending to their fields
as boys and girls raced to school with no coats or gloves.
Around morning recess in the Dakotas and on the bell of
afternoon dismissal in Nebraska, the young pupils and their
teachers were suddenly assaulted by an explosion of hurricane-force
winds and torrential snow. By midnight, windchills had plummeted
to 40 below zero. By the dawn of Friday the thirteenth,
up to 500 people lay dead on the stark, white prairie. Too
many of the victims were school children killed while trying
to find their way home.
David Laskin tells the story of this ferocious storm and
its aftershocks in The Children's Blizzard (Harper
Perennial; October 11, 2005). Drawing on contemporary newspaper
accounts and the emotional eyewitness accounts of German,
Scandinavian, and Ukrainian immigrant settlers who survived,
Laskin presents an intimate portrait of a watershed event
in the pioneer era. By bringing to life parents who lost
children, children who lost siblings, and teachers who led
their students to shelter—or to death—when the
roofs blew off their one-room schoolhouses, he reveals how
one capricious act of weather crushed many pioneers’
faith in the promised land.
“The
blizzard literally froze a single day in time,” Laskin
reflects. “It sent a clean, fine blade through the
history of the prairie. It forced people to stop and look
at their existences—the earth and sky they had staked
their future on, the climate and environment they had brought
their children to, the peculiar forces of nature and of
nature’s God that determined whether they would live
or die.”
Deftly interweaving the facts of history and meteorology
with personal dramas, The Children's Blizzard unfolds
the stories of close-knit immigrant families whose lives
were tragically changed on January 12, 1888. Among many
memorable men, women, and children, readers will meet:
· Lena Woebbecke, a fatherless German immigrant girl
who was “farmed out” to relatives in Nebraska
at age eleven, started school after the harvest, and tragically
refused her teacher’s offer of shelter from the storm
for fear of not getting home in time to do her afternoon
chores.
·
Etta Shattuck, a deeply religious teenage schoolteacher
in Nebraska, who took shelter from the storm in a haystack,
and sacrificed both her legs to frostbite.
·
Three devout Mennonite couples who left the Ukraine for
a new home in Dakota and their five sons who left school
together and wandered blindly in the storm for hours before
finally succumbing to exhaustion and hypothermia.
Between
vivid slices of life and death, The Children's Blizzard
gives a gripping, hour-by-hour account of the storm’s
development and the desperate, botched attempts to track
it. Two very different men come to light for their role
in the disastrous consequences: Lieutenant Thomas M. Woodruff,
the West Point Graduate who detected the first signs of
the blizzard at the fledgling forecast office in Saint Paul,
Minnesota, and his boss, General Adolphus Greely, the autocratic
head of the War Department’s Signal Corps.
As Laskin reveals, a combination of incompetence, military
protocol, and his superior’s ego may have prevented
Woodruff from taking bold action to alert the people of
the Upper Midwest to do something to prepare for the coming
“cold wave”—before it was too late.
Full of deep understanding for the hard lives of the pioneers,
amazement at the power of nature, and frustration over the
fallibility of science and the helplessness of mere mortals,
The Children's Blizzard cuts to the heart of the
American heartland at a crossroads in our nation’s
history. A Barnes & Noble Discover New Writers Pick
for the Holidays, and a selection of the Book of the Month
Club, Literary Guild, and History Book Club, David Laskin’s
heartbreaking and harrowing book will make readers think
as they feel for each victim, survivor, and hero.
Critics / Reviews
"In
The Children’s Blizzard, David Laskin deploys
historical fact of the finest grain to tell the story of
a monstrous blizzard that caught the settlers of the Great
Plains utterly by surprise. Using the storm as a lens, Laskin
captures the brutal, heartbreaking folly of this chapter
in America’s history, and along the way delves into
the freakish physics of extreme cold. This is a book best
read with a fire roaring in the hearth and a blanket and
box of tissues near at hand."
—Erik Larson, author of Isaac's Storm and
The Devil in the White City
"The
American prairie has its indelible epics -- the luck-charmed
journey of Lewis and Clark, the Oregon Trail tales and travails
-- and The Children’s Blizzard adds to our
trove of western lore the nearly lost story of a mighty
blow of nature. David Laskin’s telling of the immense
1888 blizzard that struck the homestead communities of the
Dakotas and beyond is elegant in its research and eloquent
in its recountings of prairie dwellers facing impossible
weather. This is a haunting book about the odds stacked
against the settlers of the American heartland."
—Ivan Doig, author of This House of Sky
"Engrossing.
. . . . A suspenseful disaster narrative. . . . Laskin shrewdly
takes a broad historical view."
—Kirkus Reviews
"An adroit, sensitive drama and a skillful addition
to a popular genre. . . . A perceptive presentation, evoking
lives unnoticed by history but for the tragedy of this storm."
—Booklist
"A
gripping chronicle of meteorological chance and human folly
and error. . . . Novelistic and consistently affecting. .
. . A rewarding read."
—Publishers Weekly
"Terrifying
and often vivid. . . . Laskin skillfully weaves together
a clear report and explanation of the meteorological event
with harrowing accounts of slow death, loss, and, survival.
This book should be read by anyone wishing to fathom the
terrible cost of settling that desolate, dangerous, and
beautiful land."
—The Atlantic Monthly
"Laskin
pulls no punches. . . . The Children’s Blizzard
is a welcome contribution to the historical literature of
American life and westward expansion."
—Chicago Sun-Times
"Unearthing
the stories buried in a killer snow, David Laskin compellingly
recounts a devastating 1888 snowstorm."
—The Seattle Times
"Heart-breaking.
. . . This account of the 1888 blizzard that killed more
than 100 children in the Great Plains reads like a thriller.
. . . Laskin reminds us that the pioneer life wasn’t
so much romantic as it was deadly."
—Entertainment Weekly
"In
The Children’s Blizzard, Mr. Laskin has written
a fascinating account of the day the wind finally did what
it always promises to do on those bleak Dakota prairies.
. . . Mr. Laskin has chosen his subject brilliantly, for
something did change in that winter blast."
—The Wall Street Journal
"A
terrifying but beautifully written book."
—The Washington Post
"Like
a ride down a steep, icy hill on a toboggan, the story gathers
speed. . . . Even though you know how the tragic story ends
with its inevitable conclusion, it’s a tale to savor."
—The Des Moines Register
"David
Laskin has produced a book at once terrifying and engrossing
about the epoch blizzard that left an estimated 250 to 500
dead across the frigid plains of Nebraska and the Dakota
Territory."
—The Lincoln Journal Star
"David
Laskin gives us the complete story in all its fascinating,
often harrowing detail. . . . He has contributed a vital
addition to the lore of Western immigrant pioneering."
—Washington Post
"Laskin
excels at making these Plains pioneers live again, whether
they survived or succumbed to the storm. . . . This book
about flatlands is sharp enough that the thoughts and failings
of mountain climbers become crystal-clear."
—USA Today
"A
tale of horror and heroism: gripping, terrifying, and definitely
worth the read. . . . What makes The Children’s
Blizzard amazing are the survival stories from people
stranded in the sub-zero whiteout."
—Manchester Union Leader
"A
heartrending tale. . . . With a flair for novelistic detail,
Laskin brings many of these settlers back to life as he
follows the fortunes of immigrant families. . . . Every
page of the engrossing narrative explores the uncomfortable
reality of human frailty when confronting insurmountable
odds."
—Minneapolis Star Tribune
"Told
through the awed, disbelieving eyes of storm victims. .
. . The Children’s Blizzard recounts a poignant,
heartbreaking chapter in American history. Laskin draws
on firsthand accounts of the snowstorm to produce an intimate,
human-scale tale of climatic cataclysm."
—Seattle Weekly
