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From the New York Times bestselling author of The Aviator’s Wife comes a story of courage on the prairie, inspired by the devastating storm that struck the Great Plains in 1888, threatening the lives of hundreds of immigrant homesteaders, especially schoolchildren. “A nail-biter . . . poignant, powerful, perfect.” —Kate Quinn, author of The Alice Network
The morning of January 12, 1888, was unusually mild, following a punishing cold spell. It was warm enough for the homesteaders of the Dakota Territory to venture out again, and for their children to return to school without their heavy coats—leaving them unprepared when disaster struck. At the hour when most prairie schools were letting out for the day, a terrifying, fast-moving blizzard blew in without warning. Schoolteachers as young as sixteen were suddenly faced with life and death decisions: Keep the children inside, to risk freezing to death when fuel ran out, or send them home, praying they wouldn’t get lost in the storm? Based on actual oral histories of survivors, this gripping novel follows the stories of Raina and Gerda Olsen, two sisters, both schoolteachers—one becomes a hero of the storm and the other finds herself ostracized in the aftermath. It’s also the story of Anette Pedersen, a servant girl whose miraculous survival serves as a turning point in her life and touches the heart of Gavin Woodson, a newspaperman seeking redemption. It was Woodson and others like him who wrote the embellished news stories that lured northern European immigrants across the sea to settle a pitiless land. Boosters needed them to settle territories into states, and they didn’t care what lies they told these families to get them there—or whose land it originally was. At its heart, this is a story of courage, of children forced to grow up too soon, tied to the land because of their parents’ choices. It is a story of love taking root in the hard prairie ground, and of families being torn asunder by a ferocious storm that is little remembered today—because so many of its victims were immigrants to this country.
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Aviator’s Wife comes a story of courage on the prairie, inspired by the devastating storm that struck the Great Plains in 1888, threatening the lives of hundreds of immigrant homesteaders, especially schoolchildren. “A nail-biter . . . poignant, powerful, perfect.” —Kate Quinn, author of The Alice Network
The morning of January 12, 1888, was unusually mild, following a punishing cold spell. It was warm enough for the homesteaders of the Dakota Territory to venture out again, and for their children to return to school without their heavy coats—leaving them unprepared when disaster struck. At the hour when most prairie schools were letting out for the day, a terrifying, fast-moving blizzard blew in without warning. Schoolteachers as young as sixteen were suddenly faced with life and death decisions: Keep the children inside, to risk freezing to death when fuel ran out, or send them home, praying they wouldn’t get lost in the storm? Based on actual oral histories of survivors, this gripping novel follows the stories of Raina and Gerda Olsen, two sisters, both schoolteachers—one becomes a hero of the storm and the other finds herself ostracized in the aftermath. It’s also the story of Anette Pedersen, a servant girl whose miraculous survival serves as a turning point in her life and touches the heart of Gavin Woodson, a newspaperman seeking redemption. It was Woodson and others like him who wrote the embellished news stories that lured northern European immigrants across the sea to settle a pitiless land. Boosters needed them to settle territories into states, and they didn’t care what lies they told these families to get them there—or whose land it originally was. At its heart, this is a story of courage, of children forced to grow up too soon, tied to the land because of their parents’ choices. It is a story of love taking root in the hard prairie ground, and of families being torn asunder by a ferocious storm that is little remembered today—because so many of its victims were immigrants to this country.
En raison de restrictions imposées par l'éditeur, la bibliothèque n'est pas en mesure d'acheter des exemplaires supplémentaires de ce titre et nous vous présentons toutes nos excuses si la liste d'attente est longue. N'oubliez pas de regarder s'il existe d'autres exemplaires, car d'autres éditions sont peut-être disponibles.
En raison de restrictions imposées par l'éditeur, la bibliothèque n'est pas en mesure d'acheter des exemplaires supplémentaires de ce titre et nous vous présentons toutes nos excuses si la liste d'attente est longue. N'oubliez pas de regarder s'il existe d'autres exemplaires, car d'autres éditions sont peut-être disponibles.
Extraits-
From the bookNortheastern Nebraska, early afternoon, January 12, 1888
Chapter 1
The air was on fire.
The prairie was burning, snapping and hissing, sparks flying in every direction, propelled by the scorching wind. Sparks falling as thick as snowflakes in winter, burning tiny holes in cloth, stinging exposed skin. Her eyes were dry and scratchy, her hair had escaped its pins so that it fell down her back, and when she picked up one of those pins, it was scalding to the touch.
Everything was hot to the touch, even the wet gunnysacks they were using to beat out the flames were sizzling. When Raina glanced back at the house, she saw the dancing, hellish flames reflected in the windows.
“To the north,” her father called, and she ran, ran on bare legs and bare feet that stung from earth that was a fiery stovetop as she beat out a daring lick of flame that had jumped the firebreak with all her might. Just beyond the hastily plowed ditch, the emerging bluestem grasses hissed; some exploded, but the fire did not look as if it was going to cross the break.
“Save some of that for the others, Raina,” her father called, and even from that distance—he was at the head of the west break—and through the sooty air, she recognized the twinkle in his eyes. Then he turned and pointed south. “Gerda! Go!”
Raina watched her older sister leap toward another vaulting flame, beating it out before it had a chance. It was almost a game, really, a game of chicken. Who would win, the flames or the Olsens? So far, in ten years of homesteading, the Olsens had come out victorious every time.
Gerda smiled triumphantly, waving back at Raina, the outside row of vulnerable wheat, only a few inches tall, between them. At times like this, when the air was so stifling and smoky, Raina didn’t feel quite so small, quite so inconsequential as when the air was clear. On a cool, still early summer morning, the prairie could make her feel like the smallest of insects, trapped in a great dome of endless pale blue sky, the waving grasses undulating, just like the sea, against an unbroken horizon. But Gerda, Raina knew, never felt this way. Gerda was stronger, bigger. Gerda was untouchable, even from the prairie fires that flared up regularly in Nebraska, spring and fall. Gerda would know what to do in the face of fire, or ice. Or men. Gerda—
Gerda wasn’t here.
Raina blinked, gaped at the McGuffey Reader in her hand. She wasn’t on the prairie; she was in a schoolhouse. Her schoolhouse. The second class was droning the lesson:
God made the little birds to sing,
And flit from tree to tree;
’Tis He who sends them in the spring
To sing for you and me.
Raina sat straighter, tried to stretch her neck but it was no use; she was smaller than the biggest boy sitting in the last row of benches. Her pupils—precious minds that were hers to form, or so she’d been told in the letter accompanying her certificate. But the oldest one was fifteen, only a year younger than she. And the way he looked at her made her shiver, made her think of a well that was so deep, the bottom would always remain a mystery.
No, it wasn’t this boy’s eyes that made her think that; this boy’s eyes were blue, his gaze was measured, and if there was a wildness in them—only at times, for he was a well-brought-up lad—it was a wildness she believed she could tame.
His eyes were chocolate brown and soft with an understanding Raina had never before felt she needed. Until she first beheld that...
Au sujet de l’auteur-
Melanie Benjamin is the New York Times bestselling author of The Children’s Blizzard, Mistress of the Ritz, The Girls in the Picture, The Swans of Fifth Avenue, The Aviator's Wife, The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb, and Alice I Have Been. Benjamin lives in Chicago, Illinois, where she is at work on her next historical novel.
Critiques-
November 1, 2020 The brutal storm that whirled up suddenly on an enchantingly mild and sunny day in January 1888 just as schools let out became known as the Children's Blizzard for all the young lives it claimed. Best-selling historical novelist Benjamin (Mistress of the Ritz, 2019), whose previous novels focus on prominent women, astutely defines this disaster by imagining those who were killed or forever changed by it. Sisters Raina and Gerda, whose immigrant parents were lured to inhospitable Nebraska by promises of a veritable Garden of Eden, serve as teachers in one-room schoolhouses while they're still in their teens. Raina becomes entangled in the woes of the family she boards with, as does little Anette, who is sold as a servant by her cruel and desperate mother. The combustible claustrophobia of this unhappy household is matched by the ferocity of the blizzard in heart-in-throat scenes of Raina and Gerda's valiant struggles to survive. Equally compelling is the story of newspaperman Gavin, reduced to writing, at the direction of the railroads, the fake news that delivered duped Northern European immigrants to the forbidding plains. In this piercingly detailed drama, riveting in its action and psychology, Benjamin reveals the grim aspects of homesteading, from brutal deprivations to violent racism toward Native Americans and African Americans, while orchestrating, with grace and resonance, transformative moral awakenings and sustaining love.
COPYRIGHT(2020) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
November 30, 2020 Benjamin (Mistress of the Ritz) revisits the Children’s Blizzard that killed 235 people in January 1888 in this sprawling, well-told story. As the children from two Great Plains schools prepare to leave at the end of an unusually mild winter day, Benjamin focuses on the different choices made by their teachers—first-generation Norwegian American sisters Gerda and Raina Olsen, a three-day ride apart from each other across the Nebraska-Dakota border —while the storm approaches with dark clouds and strong winds. Gerda, teaching in Dakota Territory, rashly dismisses her students so she can see her would-be beau, while Raina, in Nebraska, chooses to keep her small class together. Meanwhile, jaded newspaperman Gavin Woodson is torn between opportunism—he knows he’s found a great story that can punch his ticket back to N.Y.C.—and romanticism, as Gavin, and his readers, grow entranced by the stories of the blizzard’s unlikely heroes and heroines, such as one of Raina’s students who tries to save his classmate. The narrative revolves largely around northern European settlers to the region, and the attempts to incorporate the experiences of Sioux people feel somewhat forced. Nevertheless, there’s great suspense inherent to the events. Benjamin achieves a balance of grand drama and devastatingly intimate moments.
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