Book Review

The cover art from The Children's Blizzard, by David Laskin. 

The Children's Blizzard by David Laskin is a shockingly personal yet well rounded and scientific account of the January 12 blizzard of 1888. The novel seeks to help readers understand not only the physical causes of the terrible blizzard but the human toll it took across the Great Plains. Laskin brings together personal accounts of the storms victims and survivors, as well as the available meteorological data from the era to make The Children's Blizzard both a non-fiction novel and a scientific analysis. There are three main narrative threads that run through the novel; the stories of the great plains settlers and the suffering they endured, the meteorological data, and the story of the National Signal Corps and their ineptitude at forecasting the storm.
Of the three narratives, the stories of the settlers is the most compelling. Laskin starts the novel in Europe, in places like Norway, Germany and Ukraine, which are the countries of origin of many of the Great Plains settlers. Laskin narrates the immigration and first years of settlement of a few different groups like the Mennonite Schwizers form Ukraine, and the Rollag family from Norway, to help the reader fully understand the harsh conditions that the settlers had to endure at every step of travel and early settlement. The stories of the settlers and pioneers are the most compelling parts of the novel because the tales of sod houses, crop failures and one room school houses make the reader really care for these poor pioneers who were often duped into settling in the less-fertile-then-promised Great Plains.
The second most compelling information in the novel is the meteorological data that Laskin retrieved about the accumulation and advance of the freezing air that caused the blizzard. Laskin paints a picture of the meteorological conditions that enhances understanding and is interesting to read. Readers can really envision the mass of cold air as it stews over Canada before it is finally unleashed and funneled by the Rocky Mountains to wreak havoc down across the plains states. Laskin also provides apt descriptions of the conditions on the ground once the blizzard hit. He describes snow, fine as flour, sifting its way inside of peoples clothing, and white out conditions so severe that people gave up hope and succumbed to hypothermia in their own yards, sometimes only feet from their houses. If there is a part of the meteorological data that falters it is the periodic reading of the barometric pressure and temperature from the signal posts across the plains. This methodic listing is supposed to help readers envision the advance of the storm, but all it really seemed to do was to give readers a paragraph every dozen pages to skim over. No casual reader has the attention span or the background knowledge to fully comprehend what this list of numbers and locations really means and so it becomes an obstacle to the flow of the novel. What might have been a better alternative it to take the data from these signal posts and plot them on a map. Then either include an updated map every dozen pages so that readers could glance at it and understand the movements of the storm and the changes in temperature and pressure, or chart the movement in colored bands on one map with changes in temperature at the different locations shown at different hours in some other graph or chart and include both as an appendix in the back of the book.
The other area where the storytelling faltered was in the recounting the trials and tribulations of the National Signal Corps, and Thomas Woodruff the signal officer on Saint Paul Minnesota that was in charge of accurately sending out "indications" about the weather and failed to predict the speed and severity of the storm. The story of Woodruff and the rest of the Signal Corps seems to get bogged down by stories of petty conflict and politicking, and it the least interesting part of the story. The situation surrounding Woodruff's predictions and the stories of some of the lesser signal officers in the plains states is important but it does not get the attention it deserves because it is often mixed in with dull information about the politics of the Signal Corps in Washington D.C. Because this information is so dull, it is likely readers will skim over these parts and miss information about Woodruff's thought process in sending out indications for the day of the Blizzard. The story about the Signal Corps and Washington politics does tie in at the end. After the 1888 blizzard the government decided to give weather forecasting responsibilities to the Department of Agriculture, but this nugget of information seems thrown in as an after thought, and makes little sense, especially if the reader skimmed the parts in the book about Washington D.C.
The most startling thing about the novel is how well it illustrates the Swiss Cheese theory. Conditions were exactly right for the hazard of a blizzard to turn into a true natural disaster. The blizzard came at the worst possible time, as students were in in school, and as farmers were outside trying to catch up on farm work. The weather right before the storm also made casualties worse. The weather was in any places above freezing so more people were out and about doing farm chores and more children were sent to school without gloves, hats or their warmest coats. The funnel like landscape of the Rockies, and the constancy of the snow were also factors that made the situation worse. If any one of these factors had been different, if for example the storm hit in the evening after everyone was already inside, many lives would have been spared.
The Children's Blizzard is a good read despite its inconsistency. When Laskin is narrating the stories of the pioneers and their struggle for survival the novel sprints along at a fascinating pace. When Laskin explains the meteorological data and the behavior of the storm the novel walks along comfortably enough for the reader to keep up, but when Laskin tells of the infighting and ineptitude of the Signal Corps the novel falters and falls and the reader will likely leave these details behind.