Publishers Weekly
On September 16, 1928, a devastating hurricane struck Florida. Although it was one of the deadliest hurricanes in history, taking the lives of 7,000 people as it swept from the Caribbean to Canada, it has been largely forgotten. In his exhaustive but unwieldy chronicle of the storm, Kleinberg (Historical Traveler's Guide to Florida) details its effect on Florida, where winds of up to 160 mph, inadequate forecasting, lack of communication and insufficient evacuation routes contributed to tremendous loss of life. Many of the victims were poor black laborers who lived in communities near the huge inland Lake Okeechobee, where a flimsy dike broke and the water was pushed "across the land in a moving engine of death." For Florida's blacks, the tragedy was compounded by the fact that while white dead were given decent burial, nearly 700 African-American dead were unceremoniously dumped into a 1.5-acre mass grave in West Palm Beach. Basing his narrative on interviews with survivors and material from archives, newspapers, diaries and official reports, Kleinberg presents vivid pictures of dozens of individual ordeals and recounts the tale of black suffering in the region around Lake Okeechobee, which appears in Zora Neale Hurston's novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. Although he dulls the emotional impact with too much detail (the chapter on Hurston, for example, unnecessarily includes a full account of her life), he does capture the drama and tragedy of the unnamed storm that did much more damage than the famous Hurricane Andrew of 1992. Photos not seen by PW. (Sept.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Native son and state historian Kleinberg reports on the truly ill wind that blew over Florida 75 years ago. The hurricane of September 1928 (they weren’t named in those days) was among the most devastating in the peninsula’s history. Fresh from a swath of destruction through the Caribbean, it claimed the lives of more than 2,000 Florida residents in a matter of hours. Drawing on research that began when he interviewed survivors for a 60th-anniversary story in the Palm Beach Post, features writer Kleinberg reviews this harrowing story with a flood of detail. The natural disaster’s impact, he shows, was worsened by primitive communications and inaccurate forecasts. With winds gusting to 160 m.p.h., the hurricane did not follow the usual pattern and lose strength over land. Rather, the eye of the storm fed on the shallow waters of Lake Okeechobee, then poured those waters, along with much of the Atlantic, over the countryside. Chickens, cows, and humans drowned in the deluge. Children were swept from the arms of their parents. Meteorological instruments, roads, and houses were washed away. It was a calamity of nature: who could be blamed? But, if fault couldn’t be assigned for the storm, it surely could for the human prejudices displayed during the calm that followed. Surviving African-Americans were dragooned under the guns of the militia to clean up and to collect the bloated bodies of the dead, which were found for weeks after the hurricane; blacks and whites were buried in separate mass graves. The Red Cross was criticized (without clear justification) for its efforts, which could not provide sufficient relief in any circumstances. State and Federal governments made feeble stabs atrecovery. Chambers of Commerce put on their most cheerful faces. Ultimately, Lake Okeechobee was provided with a proper dike. A full history of really inclement weather in a nimbus of telling particulars, sure to be popular with fans of disaster tales. (8 pp. photos, not seen) Agent: Jeff Gerecke/JCA Literary Agency
