An interesting firsthand account of the physical and emotional recovery of a town.
McHugh’s (Death Matters, 2009, etc.) fourth book offers a primary historical record of a small town hit by a violent and deadly tornado.
McHugh describes 1940s Shelburn, Ind., as a quintessential Midwestern town: a population of roughly 1,250 living in a large geographical area. His detailed chronicle of Shelburn’s collective response to a horrific natural disaster drops the reader directly into the struggling community. The author gives a voice to each of those who stepped forward to help their neighbors’ battered spirits and properties. McHugh cites a meteorological record of tornado destruction throughout the United States, which contextualizes the severity of the one Shelburn endured. The author, a 19-year-old ambulance driver at the time of the storm, provides a firsthand account of his neighbors’ suffering and tenacity with the lens of one accustomed to personal tragedy. McHugh smartly allows the emotions of the story to develop organically in the voices of those he interviewed. While the book may serve as a resource for Shelburn’s historical record, as well as a guide to preparing for a tornado, it also encapsulates the fortitude of the residents. Many neighboring communities met Shelburn’s need so abundantly the Red Cross no longer accepted food donations just one day after the storm. McHugh reveals these standout facts to provide a reflection of the community’s heart. While rebuilding the town was a dynamic undertaking, Shelburn’s people did the work without questioning one another’s motives or agendas. In the true Midwestern spirit of working together to build and rebuild, McHugh lets his neighbors and friends tell their stories in their own ways.
An interesting firsthand account of the physical and emotional recovery of a town.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1456494100
Page Count: 100
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 3, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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