Tag: storms

The Girl from Widow Hills by Megan Miranda

- Stephanie Leave a comment

Megan Miranda examines the effect of media sensationalism in the aftermath of a tragic event in her latest book, The Girl From Widow Hills. Everyone may think that they know the true story, but in reality, the truth is more twisted than anyone could ever believe.

Arden Maynor is the girl from Widow Hills. When she was six years old, Arden was swept away by a rainstorm while she was sleepwalking in the middle of the night. She went missing for days. While her story may have begun locally, it quickly gained traction and became national news. People from all over flocked to Widow Hills to help search for Arden. Prayer vigils and search parties were set up as rescuers combed the area searching for any sign of where she could be.

Against all odds, Arden was found days later alive and clinging to a storm drain. After her rescue, she became a living miracle. Her mother wrote a book. Fame swallowed what little sense of normalcy Arden had left. People sent letters, both positive and negative, as they all demanded that Arden make something important out of her life since she had survived. They wanted recompense for all the time and money that they poured into the search for her and for her recovery after she was found. On the anniversary every year, the publicity worsened. It all became too much.

Arden disappeared. She changed her name and tried to make a new life for herself. Now living hundreds of miles away from Widow Hills, Arden goes by Olivia. She has has stayed out of the media’s attention for years and started a new life. As the twentieth anniversary of her rescue creeps ever closer, Olivia is sure that the media will track her down and force her to live out the horrors of that time and the subsequent messiness after her rescue. Becoming increasingly uneasy, Olivia believes she is being watched. She has started sleepwalking again, sometimes waking up outside her house. One night, Olivia wakes up in her yard with the corpse of a man she knows from her past laying at her feet. What has she done? Why is he there? Olivia soon realizes the tranquility she has had for the last few years is going to disappear and havoc will rush back into her life. She is once again going to become the center of the story and there is nothing she can do to stop it.

This book is also available in the following formats:

Storm Lit

- Lynn Leave a comment

Tornado BooksTornados are featured in several recent books – from literary fiction to genre mysteries.

In Sing Them Home by Stephanie Kallos, a tornado is the catalyst for the trajectory of the lives of several people. A 1978 storm takes the life of a mother; many years later the dysfunctional siblings gather for a funeral.

The Stormchasers by Jenna Blum is another story about the effects of tornados on a family. A sister joins a group of storm chasers in order to locate her mentally ill brother, who is a storm chaser, himself.

A 1963 tornado in Oklahoma changes the lives of four people in crisis in Five Days in May by Ninie Hammon.

There are rumors of a movie of The Breathtaker by Alice Blanchard.  Set again in Oklahoma, this is a fast-paced thriller about a police chief who realizes that foul play, rather than the storm is the cause of death for several deaths. The murders mount as the tornado season progresses.

In other books, a tornado is not the driving force in the narrative or psychology of characters, rather it’s a convenient plot point.

The Riesling Retribution by Ellen Crosby is a mystery that begins with a skull discovered after a tornado.

Similarly, in A Bad Day for Pretty by Sophie Littlefile a body is found in the aftermath of a tornado.

 

 

 

 

Storm Kings by Lee Sandlin

- Ann Leave a comment

storm kingsStorm Kings is a riveting tale of supercell tornadoes and the quirky, pioneering, weather-obsessed scientists whose discoveries created the science of modern meteorology.

While tornadoes have occasionally been spotted elsewhere, only the central plains of North America have the perfect conditions for their creation. For the early settlers the sight of a funnel cloud was an unearthly event. They called it the “Storm King,” and their descriptions bordered on the supernatural: it glowed green or red, it whistled or moaned or sang. In Storm Kings, Lee Sandlin explores America’s fascination with and unique relationship to tornadoes. From Ben Franklin’s early experiments to the “great storm war” of the nineteenth century to heartland life in the early twentieth century, Sandlin re-creates with vivid descriptions some of the most devastating storms in America’s history, including the Tri-state Tornado of 1925 and the Peshtigo “fire tornado,” whose deadly path of destruction was left encased in glass.

Drawing on memoirs, letters, eyewitness testimonies, and archives, Sandlin brings to life the forgotten characters and scientists who changed a nation—including James Espy, America’s first meteorologist, and Colonel John Park Finley, who helped place a network of weather “spotters” across the country. Along the way, Sandlin details the little-known but fascinating history of the National Weather Service, paints a vivid picture of the early Midwest, and shows how successive generations came to understand, and finally coexist with, the spiraling menace that could erase lives and whole towns in an instant. (description from publisher)

F5 – Tornadoes in the Heartland

- Lynn 1 Comment

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If you are a weather buff (and who isn’t in Iowa), you’ll find this book a suspenseful read. Mark Levine, a University of Iowa poetry professor, tells the story of April 3rd, 1974, an infamous date in weather history. The term Super Outbreak was coined to try to describe the unprecedented 148 tornados that pounded the U.S. from Alabama to Canada for 18 hours. The author focuses on rural northern Alabama and we get to know the victims and survivors as well-rounded individuals, so their fates become even more meaningful.

Many survive multiple tornados – actually being in the tornado itself and being bypassed by multiple funnel clouds. A particularly nightmarish scene is in the small Athens, Alabama hospial as it is flooded with victims and is threatened by tornados itself and finally loses power.

Levine’s skill is both in dramatizing each person’s experience and explaining the technical, meteorological reasons for the storms. The book will appeal to those who want to learn their science or history in a dramatic way.