Review: Blizzard of Glass by Sally M. Walker (Nov. 2011)
(See more book reviews from this week’s Nonfiction Monday roundup at Great Kid Books and 100 Scope Notes).
On December 6, 1917, a munitions ship collided with another ship in the waters off Halifax, Canada. The resulting explosion killed some 2,000 people and leveled buildings for miles around. As the city reeled from shock, an oncoming blizzard hampered relief efforts. In clear, gripping prose, Walker tells the story of that terrible day through the eyes of five families who lived through—and were forever changed by—the disaster.
This is a book I simply couldn’t put down. The tension built gradually in the first few chapters as Walker introduces the families going about their normal business—kids walking to school, mothers dressing toddlers, fathers working by the docks—none of them suspecting how a combination of bad luck and miscommunication would lead to the largest man-made explosion until the atomic bomb. By the time Walker described what the families were doing just before the explosion, I was practically biting my nails:
Albert O’Brien stepped off the ship in the dry dock.
His son Gerald skipped toward the store.
At home, Albert’s wife, Bertie, and his daughter Evelyn watched smoke fill the sky.
Vincent Coleman, his warning telegraph message sent, started to run.
At home, his wife, Frances, and daughters Juanita and Eileen heard sirens.
In school, Eleanor Coleman headed toward her classroom.
Gerald Coleman finished lighting candles in St. Joseph’s Church…
And then detonation. From there the book kicked into high gear as Walker chronicles the frantic search-and-rescue efforts, highlighting the effects on the five families. A harbor map and family trees help clarify the scope of the disaster. And despite the bleakness I was struck by the accounts of real-life heroism: the rescuers who labored in a snowstorm to pull survivors from the wreckage, the food, medicine and aid workers sent by cities around Halifax. The book could have been an unrelenting account of tragedy. Instead, Walker shows how compassion saved many lives that might otherwise have been lost.
Blizzard of Glass has a lot in common with Flesh and Blood So Cheap, another book about an industrial accident that claimed many lives. The Triangle fire prompted national reform in worker safety and forever changed the labor movement. Blizzard of Glass can make no such claim—but that doesn’t mean it’s any less important. In Walker’s hands, this tragedy of “ordinary” people becomes an extraordinary story, one deeply worthy of remembrance.
