The Children's Blizzard by Melanie Benjamin

I had not yet read Melanie Benjamin when I heard her talk about her new historical fiction novel The Children's Blizzard on Karen Dionne's Back Room author series. 

I had read David Laskin's nonfiction book The Children's Blizzard in 2005 and knew the story of the 1888 weather event that hit the upper Midwest prairie, devastating immigrant settlements and killing children coming home from school.

Benjamin talked about her writing on the Back Room, how she was an early reader, the pressure to be commercial, and her desire to write about something different, not about a specific historical figure. 

Knowing the tragic stories that arose from the 1888 blizzard, I was curious about how Benjamin could spin a story that avoided being a complete downer while staying true to history.

Benjamin sets the story in several homestead communities with families that represent the different situations people were in when the weather turned abruptly from balmy to a monstrous snowstorm.

She centers on two sisters who become teenage teachers, hoping to raise money for college and a teaching certificate. When the blizzard strikes, one sister's leadership brings notoriety and the other sister becomes a media darling. Neither could prevent the deaths of students, and both faced anger from family members who held her responsible for the loss of a child. How their stories were spinned by the news media made all the difference. One sister thrived, and the other escapes into obscurity.

The girl teachers illustrate the limited options available for women and their students. Boys also had limited choices; the inquisitive and intelligent farm boy Tor is tied to the land to support his family.

Underlying the tale is how boosters falsely portrayed life in the plains to lure homesteaders to settle there, appealing especially to Norwegian and Swedish immigrants, those whose homeland could not offer the farmland they longed to own. 60% of these homesteaders gave up and left; most of those who remained lived in poverty or on the edge.

And of course, settlers were wanted to spur economic growth and to hold the land from the Native Americans who had been dispossessed, removed, and killed. 

Words and promises lure those who long for a better life, spurring people to leave their homeland and families, and in one case almost luring a young teacher to run away with a married man.

I became emotionally invested in these characters, propelled to read on. After the storm, the intensity did not abate as alliances and friendships shifted and, finally, new opportunities arose. These families lost so much, and yet they forge on.

What a read for a pandemic! Determination, strength, fortitude, community, charity, pull these characters through tragedy. 

I especially appreciated the portrayal of the communities, offering me a better insight into the character of the Midwest plains. In the Author's Note, Benjamin wrote, "Considering the era in which we live, I was intrigued and moved by this tragedy involving immigrants, who were welcomed to this country, without whom American would not be what it is today--and who were lured here, in many cases, by outright falsehoods masquerading as news and fact."

She points out that the plains was a dry and unsuitable environment for farming the crops these immigrants knew. When the Ogallala Aquifer was taped as a water source, it became the 'breadbasket' we grew up with, but over-farming is depleting the resource. Some day, it will be a desert again, especially with climate change complications.

And once again, people will be on the move, seeking out new settlements to support them.

Now, I wonder why I waited so long to read this author!

I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

The Children's Blizzard: A Novel
by Melanie Benjamin
Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine
Delacorte Press
Pub Date: January 12, 2021  
ISBN: 9780399182280
hardcover $28.00 (USD)

ebook ISBN 9780399182297 $13.99

audiobook download ISBN 9780525492771

from the publisher

The morning of January 12, 1888, was unusually mild, following a punishing cold spell. It was warm enough for the homesteaders of the Dakota Territory to venture out again, and for their children to return to school without their heavy coats—leaving them unprepared when disaster struck. At the hour when most prairie schools were letting out for the day, a terrifying, fast-moving blizzard blew in without warning. Schoolteachers as young as sixteen were suddenly faced with life and death decisions: Keep the children inside, to risk freezing to death when fuel ran out, or send them home, praying they wouldn’t get lost in the storm?

Based on actual oral histories of survivors, this gripping novel follows the stories of Raina and Gerda Olsen, two sisters, both schoolteachers—one becomes a hero of the storm and the other finds herself ostracized in the aftermath. It’s also the story of Anette Pedersen, a servant girl whose miraculous survival serves as a turning point in her life and touches the heart of Gavin Woodson, a newspaperman seeking redemption. It was Woodson and others like him who wrote the embellished news stories that lured northern European immigrants across the sea to settle a pitiless land. Boosters needed them to settle territories into states, and they didn’t care what lies they told these families to get them there—or whose land it originally was.

At its heart, this is a story of courage, of children forced to grow up too soon, tied to the land because of their parents’ choices. It is a story of love taking root in the hard prairie ground, and of families being torn asunder by a ferocious storm that is little remembered today—because so many of its victims were immigrants to this country.