The Children's Blizzard

From Publishers Weekly
In 1888, a sudden, violent blizzard swept across the American plains, killing hundreds of people, many of them children on their way home from school. As Laskin (Partisans) writes in this gripping chronicle of meteorological chance and human folly and error, the School Children's Blizzard, as it came to be known, was "a clean, fine blade through the history of the prairie," a turning point in the minds of the most steadfast settlers: by the turn of the 20th century, 60% of pioneer families had left the plains. Laskin shows how portions of Minnesota, Nebraska and the Dakotas, heavily promoted by railroads and speculators, represented "land, freedom, hope" for thousands of impoverished European immigrants—particularly Germans and Scandinavians—who instead found an unpredictable, sometimes brutal environment, a "land they loved but didn't really understand." Their stories of bitter struggle in the blizzard, which Laskin relates via survivors' accounts and a novelistic imagination, are consistently affecting. And Laskin's careful consideration of the inefficiencies of the army's inexpert weather service and his chronicle of the storm's aftermath in the papers (differences in death counts provoked a national "unseemly brawl") add to this rewarding read. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Though rudimentary, weather forecasting in 1888 was capable of predicting a major winter storm. For the upper Great Plains, full of homesteading immigrants from Norway, Germany, and Russia, the weather sentinel was army officer Thomas Woodruff, posted in St. Paul, Minnesota. The meteorological data Woodruff worked with in January 1888, but failed to appreciate, portended a devastating blizzard. This is but one dimension in Laskin's account of a disaster that claimed between 250 and 500 lives. Replete with stoic fact and touching pathos, his history also encompasses the pioneers in Nebraska, the Dakota Territory, and Minnesota whom the snowy whirlwinds visited with frigid death; hypothermia's physiological process forms yet another aspect of Laskin's narrative. It is a perceptive presentation, evoking lives--many those of children--unnoticed by history but for the tragedy of this storm. Schools were in session when the tempest roared across the plain; teachers, as Laskin recounts, made varied and fateful decisions about saving their students. An adroit, sensitive drama and a skillful addition to a popular genre. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Erik Larson, author of Isaac's Storm and The Devil in the White City
"Laskin captures the brutal, heartbreaking folly of this chapter in America's history."

Book Description

The gripping story of an epic prairie snowstorm that killed hundreds of newly arrived settlers and cast a shadow on the promise of the American frontier.

January 12, 1888, began as an unseasonably warm morning across Nebraska, the Dakotas, and Minnesota, the weather so mild that children walked to school without coats and gloves. But that afternoon, without warning, the atmosphere suddenly, violently changed. One moment the air was calm; the next the sky exploded in a raging chaos of horizontal snow and hurricane-force winds. Temperatures plunged as an unprecedented cold front ripped through the center of the continent.

By Friday morning, January 13, some five hundred people lay dead on the drifted prairie, many of them children who had perished on their way home from country schools. In a few terrifying hours, the hopes of the pioneers had been blasted by the bitter realities of their harsh environment. Recent immigrants from Germany, Norway, Denmark, and the Ukraine learned that their free homestead was not a paradise but a hard, unforgiving place governed by natural forces they neither understood nor controlled.

With the storm as its dramatic, heartbreaking focal point, The Children's Blizzard captures this pivotal moment in American history by tracing the stories of five families who were forever changed that day. Drawing on family interviews and memoirs, as well as hundreds of contemporary accounts, David Laskin creates an intimate picture of the men, women, and children who made choices they would regret as long as they lived. Here too is a meticulous account of the evolution of the storm and the vain struggle of government forecasters to track its progress.

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review from Discover Great New Writers
In the tradition of Isaac's Storm, Laskin has written of a devastating, historic event. With meticulous detail, Laskin's spine-tingler describes the hardy European pioneers who settled the Plains, the functional state of the National Weather Service in the late 1800s, and the encroaching storm that would wreak havoc on the prairie one January day.

Awakening to an unusually warm winter morning, the residents of Nebraska and the Dakotas optimistically think they are in for a January thaw. Oh, but are they wrong! For later that morning, a blinding snowstorm bears down on the unprepared settlers, bringing "a howling pandemonium of ice and snow," and air so frigid that people cannot breathe. The ice "webbed their eyelashes and sealed their eyes shut," rendering them blind and disoriented mere feet from shelter. The most horrific aspect of the storm's destruction is its victims: by and large, young children caught in the blizzard on their way home from school.

The voices of the midwestern pioneers jump off the page in Laskin's hands. Recent arrivals, they hadn't yet determined the "vagaries of soil and climate," leaving them "vulnerable and exposed" to this terrible act of nature. The Children's Blizzard depicts a land where calamitous events occur, where "collisions between ordinary people going about their daily lives and the immense unfathomable disturbances of weather," are endured by a people as tough as steel. (Holiday 2004 Selection)

FROM THE PUBLISHER

January 12, 1888, began as an unseasonably warm morning across Nebraska, the Dakotas, and Minnesota, the weather so mild that children walked to school without coats and gloves. But that afternoon, without warning, the atmosphere suddenly, violently changed. One moment the air was calm; the next the sky exploded in a raging chaos of horizontal snow and hurricane-force winds. Temperatures plunged as an unprecedented cold front ripped through the center of the continent. By Friday morning, January 13, some five hundred people lay dead on the drifted prairie, many of them children who had perished on their way home from country schools. In a few terrifying hours, the hopes of the pioneers had been blasted by the bitter realities of their harsh environment. Recent immigrants from Germany, Norway, Denmark, and the Ukraine learned that their free homestead was not a paradise but a hard, unforgiving place governed by natural forces they neither understood nor controlled.

With the storm as its dramatic, heartbreaking focal point, The Children's Blizzard captures this pivotal moment in American history by tracing the stories of five families who were forever changed that day. Drawing on family interviews and memoirs, as well as hundreds of contemporary accounts, David Laskin creates an intimate picture of the men, women, and children who made choices they would regret as long as they lived. Here too is a meticulous account of the evolution of the storm and the vain struggle of government forecasters to track its progress. The blizzard of January 12, 1888, is still remembered on the prairie. Children fled that day while their teachers screamed into the relentless roar. Husbands staggered into the blinding wind in search of wives. Fathers collapsed while trying to drag their children to safety. In telling the story of this meteorological catastrophe, the deadliest blizzard ever to hit the prairie states, David Laskin has produced a masterful portrait of a tragic crucible in the settlement of the American heartland.

FROM THE CRITICS

Leonard F. Guttridge - The Washington Post

After reading Laskin's well-told story, it may not be easy to glance at seasonal greeting cards or the whirling flakes of upturned snow globes without a shiver -- or to fail to hear an echo of Johann Kaufmann's cry upon finding his three sons inseparably frozen to the ground, "O God, is it my fault or yours . . .?" Laskin has contributed a vital addition to the lore of Western immigrant pioneering.

Publishers Weekly

In 1888, a sudden, violent blizzard swept across the American plains, killing hundreds of people, many of them children on their way home from school. As Laskin (Partisans) writes in this gripping chronicle of meteorological chance and human folly and error, the School Children's Blizzard, as it came to be known, was "a clean, fine blade through the history of the prairie," a turning point in the minds of the most steadfast settlers: by the turn of the 20th century, 60% of pioneer families had left the plains. Laskin shows how portions of Minnesota, Nebraska and the Dakotas, heavily promoted by railroads and speculators, represented "land, freedom, hope" for thousands of impoverished European immigrants-particularly Germans and Scandinavians-who instead found an unpredictable, sometimes brutal environment, a "land they loved but didn't really understand." Their stories of bitter struggle in the blizzard, which Laskin relates via survivors' accounts and a novelistic imagination, are consistently affecting. And Laskin's careful consideration of the inefficiencies of the army's inexpert weather service and his chronicle of the storm's aftermath in the papers (differences in death counts provoked a national "unseemly brawl") add to this rewarding read. Agent, Jill Kneerim. (Nov.) Forecast: Praise from Erik Larson and Ivan Doig, a nod from the B&N Discover program, and book club attention (it's an alternate for BOMC, Literary Guild and the History Book Club) should help this title stand out. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

On an unseasonably warm winter day in the Great Plains, a ferocious blizzard suddenly blew up out of nowhere, and soon 500 people (mostly children) were dead. A harrowing story from the author of Braving the Elements; with an eight-city author tour. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

School Library Journal

Adult/High School-That 1888 January day on the northern plains was bright and warm-the first mild weather in several weeks-leading many children to attend school without coats, boots, hats, or mittens. A number of students were caught in the sudden storm that hit later that day. Laskin details this event-the worst blizzard anyone in those parts ever encountered. It not only took the lives of hundreds of settlers, but also formed a significant crack in the westward movement and helped to cause a movement out. The author introduces five pioneer families, beginning with why they left the old country. The personalization of these settlers breathes life into this history and holds readers spellbound. Laskin devotes several chapters to the meteorology of storms, especially this one, and the politics and history of the Army Signal Corps, which ran a fledgling weather service at the time. Readers are then led through the storm and its effects on the featured families as well as on many others. Some teachers kept students at school, burning desks to stay warm overnight; some tried to keep students in but were unsuccessful; and some led them out, not realizing how dangerous it was. A few children and adults who got lost somehow managed to survive covered by snow, then died when they got to their feet in the morning. Laskin explains why, and delves into other effects of prolonged exposure to cold. A gripping story, well told.-Judy McAloon, Potomac Library, Prince William County, VA Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews