The Children’s Blizzard
The Children’s Blizzard is the story of the Blizzard of 1888, which swept across the Great Plains with no warning and killed hundreds of people, many of them children on their way home from school. This is a fictionalized account of that devastating storm, based upon actual events and oral histories of the survivors.
This book is exquisitely written. Melanie Benjamin does an incredible job of connecting the reader with the characters. She shares the backstories and inner thoughts and feelings of pretty much every character in the book. Even the animals have something to say. And her stories delve deeply into the characters’ lives. The protagonists are two sisters who are both schoolteachers. Although they have so much in common, they experience very different outcomes during the storm simply based on last-minute decisions. There is also an immigrant family led by a stressed-out mother and a dallying, irresponsible father, and a young girl who has been sold to them by her mother for next to nothing. We meet an African American bar owner, who gives us the perspective of how people of color were treated in the late 1880s. After the storm, a great newspaperman arrives. He comes to the area in search of the next big story but instead experiences a life-changing connection with one of the victims.
Benjamin’s account of the harrowing experiences of the young people struggling through hazardous conditions, blinding snow, and freezing weather to try and find their way home, sometimes in vain, leaves us on the edge of our seat, feeling as if we are traveling with them. Benjamin has written a book based on true events that cannot be missed, and I recommend everyone read this story, which is both heartbreaking and inspiring.
