The Great Hurricane: 1938

by Cherie Burns

On the night of September 21,1938, news on the radio was full of the invasion of Czechoslovakia. There was no mention of any severe weather. By the time oceanfront residents noticed an ominous color in the sky, it was too late to escape. In an age before warning systems and the ubiquity of television, this unprecedented storm caught the Northeast off guard, obliterated coastal communities, and killed seven hundred people.

The Great 1938 is a spellbinding hour-by-hour reconstruction of one of the most destructive and powerful storms ever to hit the United States. With riveting detail, Burns weaves together the countless personal stories of loved ones lost and lives changed forever — from those of the Moore family, washed to sea on a raft formerly their attic floor, to Katharine Hepburn, holed up in her Connecticut mansion, watching her car take to the air like a bit of paper.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Audiobook, American History, Science, Historical, Survival

240 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2005

Reviews

[Tasha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting story. I've never heard of this hurricane but it was a terror! A surprise attack as the weather warning system was very different at that time.

[Shiloah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hard to put down! I just can’t even imagine having to experience this drama of the sea overtaking an unprepared New England village. The story was well told through many stories of both survivors and those who didn’t.

[Pamela · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Great Hurricane: 1938 by Cherie Burns is good primarily because it deals with the human interest impact of such a huge storm. It came ashore at Long Island on September 21 with winds of 155 and gusts up to 180. Over the next 24 hours, it moved through New England causing incredible damage throughout those states to crops, trees, and livestock. Small villages and coastal cottages were totally eliminated. The storm surge set record heights as it hit at high tide which was at its yearly heights all along the coast so flooding was severe. The death toll was approximately 700 and the stories Ms. Burns tells are poignant. She begins by introducing the reader to a series of different people from the area. Rich families, servants, children, fisherman, church ladies, farmers, city workers, holiday tourists, and even The actress, Katherine Hepburn, who was at her family's summer home. We follow them through the storm and its aftermath. Some of their stories are heroic, some foolhardy and some tragic. I was caught off guard by the number of people who lived directly on the ocean yet were unable to swim. Also, then as now, many died because they kept standing on the beach to watch the waves approach.

The huge difference between this storm and today's hurricanes is the lack of weather reporting or clear knowledge of hurricane development. The people along the shores of the states affected had literally no warning. there was nothing like the NOAA National Hurricane Center and meteorology was in its infancy. Severe weather reporting basically didn't exist and, besides, hurricanes "didn't occur that far north". So these people didn't really know what was happening or see it coming. There was no FEMA to deal with the aftermath either. Even household insurance was non-existent.

All of this made The Great Hurricane a riveting story. I did have to take issue with the author continually calling it one of the worst disasters in U.S. history. Bad as it was, others are much worse. The 1900 hurricane in Galveston is still the worst natural disaster in the history of the country. 6000 people lost their lives that day and some estimates go as high as 12,000. But the Long Island Express was the deadliest to hit New England.

[Scott Hitchcock · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think only those with an operating knowledge of Long Island and coastal NE will really like this book. What drew me in was my grandparents were married in early October and ten days after the storm hit travel between Boston and Braintree where they live, 8 miles south, was still prohibitive. Imagine that in terms of today.

I do appreciate the author probably had a hard time researching the facts since those old enough to have a big memory of the storm would be over 90 years old at this point. But the book was very text-bookish in nature even when accounting for tragedy and grief.

I did laugh that looters pulled into downtown Providence in boats and were more accomplished than the police or rescuers. RI crime #legendary.

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just so so in my opinion.

[Barbara Humphrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Living along the Gulf Coast of TX, I am very acquainted with hurricanes. I had not read of very many hurricanes hitting the NE United States and so was eager to read about this one. I believe what made it so interesting was just how these very wealthy people with second homes along the shore, that were true mansions (as opposed to today's mini mansions) and how they dealt with the utter destruction and abject fear of the true ferocity of a large hurricane was palpable as I read. The author's description of the true power of an angry ocean was as I have often personally observed. Although I live about 40 miles inland from Galveston, I have never had to live through the devastating storm surge that had waves crashing into the 3rd story of a home. Reading it was almost like being there. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in this subject.

[Joanne Fate · Rating 4 out of 5]

This hurricane hit without warning. Not only was meteorology in its infancy, there was a war in Europe, and a young weatherman who was ignored by his peers. So nobody expected what came ashore. This book does an excellent job with personal stories to describe and humanize the tragedy. It explains the basic science of what happened.

My mother and a childhood friend used to talk about this storm. They grew up in New Hampshire in the Connecticut River Valley. I think it needed to be a little longer to account for damage further from the coast. This book's only miss is that it stopped too soon. It gets a strong 4 stars for my broken heart.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a pretty good account of GH38 (as she calls it). She's written a short article that gives the gist for the Huffington Post here:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/not-al...

It was devastating & she shows that with a lot of personal accounts. Some are miraculous, others tragic. There's even some dialogue, although it's limited to "We survived by God's grace." & other rather silly expressions that are probably accurate. (Why do people say such things? It's like thanking a serial killer for taking out the family next door.)

She's really good at describing the economics & attitudes of the time such as pointing out how the Great Depression was just lifting & the story was overshadowed by Hitler annexing Czechoslovakia. Few knew about it afterward due to poor communications. Lack of communication was a big part of the disaster, too. She points that out quite a few times. It was especially sad as folks tried to find loved ones.

For such a short book, she managed to be a lot more repetitive than I liked, so I'm taking away 1 star for that. The author was pretty factual in reporting attitudes of the time, but the narrator couldn't keep her feelings to herself which costs this audio edition another star. (I'll be sure to avoid any other books narrated by Anna Fields in the future.)

This book would probably be best in text & I do recommend it for 10 & up.

[Amy · Rating 2 out of 5]

As a native New Englander who lives smack dab in the area of Connecticut that was devastated by this storm, I have more than a glancing interest in the topic. Even more than 70 years later, the people who live around here still "remember" it. I have vivid memories of my grandparents telling us about their experiences during the storm, and I have a friend who lost family members to the storm surge that swept through Watch Hill and Napatree Point in Rhode Island. In regards to this book, I might have given it 3 stars if I hadn't been distracted by more than a few spelling errors/typos. I also found it annoying that the storm was constantly referred to as "GH38," as though it was a virus. If you are truly interested in a detailed and vivid retelling of the hurricane and its impact, I would recommend "Sudden Sea" by R.A. Scotti instead.

[Claudia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Can you imagine waking up one morning on Long Island or along the shores of Long Island Sound and conduct your everyday activities of going to work, doing chores, errands, school or even get married and by the end of the day, deal with the devastation after what was determined to be a category 5 hurricane tore through your life?

That's exactly what the residents of those areas went through on September 21, 1938. The fishermen suspected a storm was coming when the barometer dropped suddenly. They were watching the southern horizon and figured a nor'eastern was heading their way since hurricanes didn't land in New England.

But it was a hurricane and all the official notice they received was 'rain, heavy at times'. Admittedly, people were more concerned with dealing with the effects of the Great Depression as well as watching as Adolf Hitler demanded that Czechoslovakia surrender the Suedetenland and the specter of war threatened in Europe.

GH38 made landfall on the southern shore of Long Island at 3 pm and was in Burlington, Vt at 7 pm. That's over 300 miles in 4 hours, travelling over 70 miles per hour. A speed practically unheard of for a tropical storm.

The stories from those survivors provide insights into those eternity-long hours of terror. Thinking they would be protected by their homes which disintegrated around them, many managed to find some wreckage - in many cases , a section of roof - to huddle on as the winds blew them out into the Sound and for the fortunate ones, onto land in Connecticut.

Beach front areas were literally scoured clear of homes, businesses and roads. If the building survived, it was likely uninhabitable. Many businesses throughout New England, already struggling, never recovered. Church spires, part of the quaint scenery of rural New England, were toppled. Millions of tons of sand was moved and not only the beaches were radically altered but beneath the water, the ocean floor was new and unknown which made navigation unpredictable for years. The fishing industry lost hundreds of their vessels, nearly wiping out an industry that stretched back to the Pilgrims' landing. Storm surge of nearly 50 feet raced up Narraganset Bay into Providence. The business district of New London burned and the fire service just watched, unable to do more than try and clear an opening amidst the hundreds of trees, power poles and wires across their paths. Livestock died by the hundreds of thousands.

The final death toll approached 700.

Hundreds of thousands of trees - some of them remains of the old forests from Colonial times - were felled. In fact, the wood from those trees was salvaged and used as building lumber to replace some of those homes and cottages. The rest was stacked to be used as firewood and the author made a note that the last bundle of that supply was burned in 1980 - 42 years later. Many of the surviving forestland looked like a severe frost had struck were actually burned by the sea salt spray that traveled nearly forty miles inland.

I had to do some comparisons - the highest wind speed measured for GH38 (and there were limited facilities to do so ) was 162 mph although a gust was recorded in Massachusetts at 186 mph. SuperStorm Sandy had 115 mph and Katrina was 174 mph. There was more property damage and deaths than from the Great Chicago Fire and San Francisco Earthquake and yet, for the most part, this is an unknown disaster in American history. How short our memories.

It is also interesting to see what a storm of the magnitude of GH38 would do today, especially with storm strength and destructive capacity increasing due to climate change. If storms of this power had happened in the past, it is entirely possible they could happen in the future. And that is a scary idea.

2019-153

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Great Hurricane: 1938 is a good book which describes a massive hurricane that struck New England in September of 1938. I was born fourteen years later in Connecticut, but began to hear about the storm while I was growing up and visiting areas such as Misquamicut State Beach and Westerly in Rhode Island which had been clobbered by the storm. However, many people outside of New England have never heard of it, despite the incredible devastation which it caused. Author Cherie Burns has done a good job in providing both a big picture view of what happened and numerous stories about the people who got caught up in the storm.

Burns notes that in 1938, New England was still struggling with the after-affects of the Great Depression and the storm compounded the matter by destroying many houses and resulted in over 700 deaths. On the morning of September 21, the storm was racing up the Atlantic Coast from Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, but no weather forecasts warned people in New England that a major hurricane was headed their way. Indeed, in 1938, weather forecasting was much less sophisticated than it would become over the next 10-20 years and US Weather Bureau was convinced the storm would go out to sea. Later in the day, there was some mention of gale winds and some locals wondered if a Nor'easter was afoot, but no warning of a hurricane.

As the book recounts, it was a sunny day on the Rhode Island shore and many people were out on the local beaches enjoying the weather. Many vacationers had already left the shoreline this late in the month of September, but there were still many people in areas like Narragansett and Watch Hill who were out and about on that day and later had to move to higher ground, if possible, to save their lives.

Rhode Island has numerous bodies of water. In particular, Narragansett Bay runs all the way up from the direct ocean exposure in the city of Narragansett to the rivers which connect the bay to the capital city of Providence 25 miles to the north. On the day of the storm, the waters from the hurricane surged all the way up the bay and ultimately caused massive flooding in much of Providence.

New England is famous for many storms such as the Blizzard of 1978 and even took a big hit from Hurricane Bob in 1991, but the Hurricane of 1938 caused massive destruction and loss of life and changed the economic trajectory of many of the cities and villages that it hit directly. This book will tell you the stories of how this happened and what some of the the longer term impacts were, while offering spine tingling recollections from survivors who lived through the storm in Long Island, Connecticut, Rhode Island and many other parts of New England.

Author Burns did substantial research and interviewed many people who lived through the storm even though her book was published more than 60 years later. This book will give you a perspective about New England and the character of its people that may surprise you. I'm a lifelong New Englander, but this book helped me to look back and better understand experiences I'd had when visiting areas such as Misquamicut, Narragansett, Watch Hill and Napatree Point where the impacts of the storm of 1938 can still be seen. New England is a wonderful place to live, but its proximity to the Atlantic Ocean is often a major factor in creating dramatic weather events. This book will tell you the tale of the Hurricane of 1938, which demolished the myth that hurricanes would never hit New England.

[Cookie M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

When we think of the devastating hurricanes our country has suffered, we are not aware that one of the worst occurred before our custom of name these storms began, and it happened in an area not geographically prone to them. The Great Hurricane of 1938 hit and decimated parts of New England and Long Island, destroying homes, killing hundreds, and forever altering the landscape.
I listened to the audiobook version, and I was honestly brought to tears at least twice during the gripping narration.
If you want to read or listen to a very human feeling modern story of American history, this is a good book for you.

[Robert Melnyk · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fairly interesting account of a massive hurricane that devastated a large portion of Long Island and New England. A major focus of the book is the impact the storm had on the area of Rhode Island around Narraganset Bay. I used to do a lot of SCUBA diving in that area, so much of the locations the author talks about where somewhat familiar to me. It's amazing that these people had little to no warning about the approaching storm. Storm tracking in 1938 was not as technically advanced as it is today, but they did have telephones and telegraphs. Hard to believe that there was not more advanced warning for the people in these areas. Although it was interesting to read about the severe impact such a storm had on so many people, I found the book to be somewhat repetitive, but it did hold my interest and was worth the read.

[Aj · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really good little write-up about a mostly forgotten piece of history. I'm a Midwesterner, so the idea of oceans is not only foreign to me, they're also completely terrifying, and hurricanes are about 60% of the reason why.

The author was pretty straightforward about presenting witness accounts about the events of the storm across several communities. While there was some work done to empathize the reader with the witnesses, it was not overly flowery and did its best to present a practical narrative. It reminds me a bit of the "Curse of the Narrows" book about the Halifax explosion. Definitely worth a read.

[Glenda · Rating 3 out of 5]

What struck me most about the account of the 1938 hurricane is the number of people who failed to heed warnings to evacuate. Will humans never learn?

[Matt Lanza · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a meteorologist, I've read several more recent books on the 1938 hurricane, and this is probably the best in terms of how it details the human toll from the event. Others do a good job also, but this is probably the best I've read to this point. Very easy read also. A good introductory book to the storm and its impacts. Highly recommended especially if you want to get a sense of the horror that storm unleashed.

[Melsene G · Rating 2 out of 5]

Timely reading here. As we were experiencing Harvey and Irma, I was reading about the GH of 1938. I must say that this book read more like a diary and there were so many characters to keep track of that it was confusing. The horrors of a hurricane are just that and back then, no one could predict these events, and TV was non-existent. I thought I would enjoy this book more, but sadly I did not. The narrator was okay but it was rather humdrum.

[TheAccidental Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

Liked this a lot more than I thought I would at first. It's mainly full of personal stories of living through the storm which took New England and Long Island by surprised, causing death and destruction of an unimaginable scale. Not wild about the narration on this audiobook.

[Suzanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I needed a book set in Rhode Island for my 52 Books Around the USA Challenge, I was stumped. Certain states are really, really difficult to find. I had recently read a book about a natural disaster, So Terrible a Storm, which chronicled a 1905 storm that resulted in multiple shipwrecks on Lake Superior. I was in the mood for another book like that. After much research, I found The Great Hurricane: 1938 by Cherie Burns.

From the first pages, Burns' work of non-fiction is a page-turner, that leaves you biting your nails in worry and anticipation of the fate of these New England families. The weather service was no help. The prevailing attitude was that hurricanes did not travel that far north. Yet winds of 186 miles per hour sent a wall of water "trashing boats and smashing homes from West Hampton to Connecticut and Rhode Island."

Burns style of narrative non-fiction was perfect for the harrowing stories presented here. You can almost feel you were with the families as they moved upwards in their homes, watching as the great wall of water approached to collapse the floors out from under them. Some were lucky to climb onto and float atop pieces of what once had been the roof of their summer homes, deftly dodging the life-threatening debris that littered the water around them. Haunting was the image of the last glimpse of neighbors on their porch watching the storm, never to be seen alive again.

An outstanding book and a good reminder that history is important. Hurricanes are deadly and can travel up the northern Atlantic coast. The survivors of Hurricane Sandy learned that lesson well.

[MichelleCH · Rating 4 out of 5]

In downtown Providence there is a plaque that identifies the high-water mark from the Hurricane of 1938. The Hurricane was a landmark event for the city in terms of the precautions put into place- the city is now protected by an immense hurricane barrier and flood precautions are taken very seriously. Every other storm is compared to the Great One, a once in every 100 years event.

This novel was a great way to more personally come to know the hurricane and its impact. It was fascinating to read about the very primitive weather forecasting that was in place at that time. No one knew a storm was headed their way until it was too late to leave. It is hard to imagine how shocking it must of been to see a tidal wave heading towards your home when the storm started as any other nor'easter. Once phones and electricity were down there was no way to communicate what might be heading up the coast towards others.

Burns also personalized the event by detailing specific families and their experiences during the hurricane. Even for families that survived there was a whole lot of recovery that had to happen. Towns, homes and landscapes were changed forever. A great read about a significant piece of history in Rhode Island.

[Len Knighton · Rating 5 out of 5]

As some of you may know, my system for picking the books I read is a bit strange but it seems to yield good results. After the devastation of three hurricanes in the past month or so, this system picked this book for me to read, just after the 79th anniversary of what is called GH38. This hurricane hit Long Island and the New England coast with great fury and with no warning for the residents of those communities. Indeed, a row of 39 homes along a beach in Connecticut where totally washed away without a trace, as if they had never existed.
While it is impossible to tell the story without relating some of the tragedy, the focus is on the storm and those who braved it and survived.

Five stars

[HerbieGrandma · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first learned of the Great Hurricane of 1938 while reading Katherine Hepburn's autobiography. When I saw this book on the shelf at the local used book store I snatched it up. It turned out to be a great read. Well researched and written with skill. I could not put it down and flew through it in one day. Highly recomended.

[Bonnie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Several first hand accounts and experiences from people who lived through the “surprise” hurricane that hit New England’s coastline in 1938. The good, the bad, and the ugly always come out in those situations, and this is no exception. I found the stories to be quite interesting and many quite amazing. I enjoyed the read.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good recounting of personal stories and clear explanations of the weather system and history. Would have liked to hear more detail about governmental changes to emergency response and recovery in the aftermath.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A real page turner!!

I knew a little about the hurricane from bios on Katharine Hepburn but had no idea of the scope of the damage and loss of life. It reads like you are watching a disaster film! Highly recommended.

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short book recounting stories of people who did and didn't survive the great hurricane of 1938 that struck the East coast. It could get a little confusing, keeping track of who is who. I think the stories could have been organized more coherently. Still, the stories themselves were gripping.

I kept worrying about everyone's pets even though I realized that in such a crisis all you can do is to try and keep yourself alive. I was amazed that 2 different people managed to keep their dogs alive while swimming through the storm surge & debris. Also, I am going to go ahead and believe that the parrot later found was in fact Catherine's parrot!

I knew that weather forecasting wasn't so great back then but I'd never stopped to consider that the media didn't cover world wide natural disasters extensively like they now do. Even though I've never been in a hurricane and hope that I never am, I understand the features of them and what they can do. I am appropriately scared of them thanks to all the news stories and videos I've encountered over the years. In 1938, people on the east coast of the US didn't know much about hurricanes or their potential devastation. Hurricanes "didn't happen" there. The knowledge that storm surges from a hurricane can be the deadliest part was not known. People lacked any concern about what might happen in a bad storm.

Houses weren't built up to code. There was no hurricane insurance. There were no laws stating how close to the ocean you could build your home. Honestly, I found that CRAZY, that so many of these summer homes were built basically right at the water line. The homes didn't stand a chance. The stories of people looking out their second story windows and seeing a huge wave taller than their home coming straight at them -Oh. My. God. Can you imagine? I'd be paralyzed with fear. It's amazing that anyone survived.

I liked the fact that this book focused on personal accounts and only gave a bit of information about the science of hurricanes, their history, the politics behind building codes etc. I just wanted to read eye witness accounts and that's what I got.

[Michael McCaskey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first learned about the Great Long Island - New England Hurricane in a chapter of William Manchester's The Glory and the Dream, a social history of the United States from 1932 to 1972, a great book I will write about later.

In my opinion, Manchester's account is superior to this one, but it is relatively short. Manchester focuses on the storm's impact throughout its path, while this book focuses mostly on anecdotes about its weirder effects on Long Island and Southern New England - even more narrowly on the Montauk end of Long Island, and on Rhode Island, mainly Providence, which seems to be an in-vogue locale these days.

Though I have lived on Long Island, and in Southern New England, no old timers ever told me about the 1938 hurricane, which caused so much destruction. One reason was that at the same time, in September 1938, the Munich crisis was going on, and US news focused on that. It was the first time that a key European event like this was covered by American reporters on site on the radio, as it happened, via short wave radio. In fact, the 1938 hurricane interfered with radio sending and reception, leaving voids here and there, at the same time that people were ignorant re the storm. So much so that there was almost no warning before areas of Long Island, Connecticut, and Rhode Island were devastated.

The 1938 hurricane, like Florence, 80 years later, in 2018, developed unexpectedly into a Category 4 storm, and its movements took people by surprise. People in Montauk and Providence were in the eye of the storm, so they got hit twice. Many houses, even cars, were tossed in the air and into the sea by the wind.

A timely, enjoyably readable and informative account of the greatest sea and land storm in over a century, so far not surpassed in its destructiveness along the East Coast of the US.

[Matthew Spaur · Rating 4 out of 5]

Weather experts are predicting a very active hurricane season for 2024. Such warnings may remind some people of Superstorm Sandy, a rare, major hurricane to hit the New York City metro area in 2012.

But in 1938, 15 years before we even started naming hurricanes and long before weather satellites and continuous weather forecasting, The Great Hurricane of 1938 devastated eastern Long Island and Rhode Island in the span of just four hours with no warning.

I recently listened to Cherie Burns’s 2005 history of this storm. Although the audio book is nearly 20 years old, the story and the production hold up well. Burns weaves together the personal stories of multiple people during the 24 hours surrounding the storm’s landfall. I think that’s a pretty impressive piece of reporting for an event that happened almost 70 years prior and way, way before the age of digital record keeping.

Weather prediction and communication was surprisingly primitive in 1938, which prevented adequate warnings to residents. Also, this storm advanced at 60 miles an hour, three to four times faster than most hurricanes.

The storm killed 700 people and inflicted $41 billion in damage. Whole coastal communities were permanently erased. The disaster was larger than the San Francisco Earthquake or the Chicago Fire, but it’s nearly forgotten today.

One startling thing that stuck with me was the comparison between a hurricane and atomic bombs. According to NOAA, the heat release of a hurricane is equivalent to a 10-megaton nuclear bomb exploding every 20 minutes.

[Laura Bray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Got this audio book for a trip up to Keller to visit family. (It counts for my "reading challenge" if I had it read *to* me, right? :-) )

Wait, what??? A huge hurricane *when*? And *where*? And it killed HOW many people??? I am usually pretty up to date on severe weather history, but I had never even heard of this storm.

Just like the great 1900 Galveston hurricane, the death toll and property damage were so high because the residents had *no* warning. Forecasting was somewhat better then than 1900, but still, no bulletins or warnings over the radio, and only small mentions in the paper. The forecasters all thought that the storm would weaken as it moved up the Atlantic seaboard, despite historical evidence that such storms, though rare, do occasionally come ashore. (Remember "The Perfect Storm"? Same kind of thing/same area, but at least by that time, people knew what was headed their way.)

I found the narrative very interesting; the author clearly talked to survivors to get their stories, and read accounts of those who had passed on. Lots of good research.

The main reason it fell out of the headlines (and therefore out of our consciousness) so quickly: the day after the storm hit, Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia. After that, the papers had little room for anything but war news.

Highly recommended for American history buffs (especially weather geeks like me).

(Answers to above questions: September, 1938; Long Island, NY + Connecticut + Rhode Island, *700* died.)

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun, quick read. You might even call it ... breezy?

I grew up in New Haven, Connecticut, with my grandfather's stories of surviving the Great Hurricane of 1938. He told me how he was walking home from school when the storm sprang up, how he ran through New Haven Green with trees falling down around him. I've been fascinated with this storm ever since, and Cherie Burns's book is a nice introduction. It's less about the science or the blame game – although those have their moments – and more about the stories of survivors, based in large part on interviews with them (along with retelling some previously published memoirs).

If I have any quibbles, it's that Connecticut gets relatively little mention compared to Long Island and Rhode Island. On the one hand, Long Island was where the hurricane first made landfall, and Rhode Island was in the northeast quadrant of the storm, suffering the worst of the wind and storm surge, especially it ha no Long Island to protect it from the Atlantic Ocean. But the eye of the storm passed directly over New Haven (according to the handy map at the front of the book), so it seems there must have been some stories from that neck of the woods, as well. Of course, some of that is just me wanting to hear more about experiences similar to my grandfather's, but it does leave the book feeling a tad incomplete.

That said, I sat down with this book and read it in about four hours – a good sign if you're wanting a good read!