Isaac's Storm - Erik Larson [0]
ISAAC’S STORM
“Masterful.…A thoroughly engrossing account of the catastophe.”
——The News & Observer (Raleigh)
“A terrifying account of the storm’s wrath.”
—The Seattle Times/Post-Intelligencer
“Larson’s vivid detail and storytelling ability go beyond our fascination with bizarre weather and show how natural disasters can change the course of history.”
—The Hartford Courant
“Richly imagined and prodigiously researched, [Isaac’s Storm] pulls readers into the eye of the hurricane.” —
—The New York Times
“This brilliant exploration of the hurricane’s deadly force is set against the human drama of Isaac Monroe Cline.… Long after you lift your eyes from the final page, this book will bring you back to its portraits of a city under siege, and the storm’s survivors and victims.”
—The Times-Picayune
“Drawing from public records and the personal accounts of survivors, Larson tracks in vivid detail both the path of the hurricane and the trajectory of Isaac Cline’s carrer.”
—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“Larson offers Dantesque images of trees, street lamps, houses and furnishings being turned into projectiles … of wind-whipped walls of water pressing the life out of entire city blocks.”
—The Plain Dealer
“In all the books about disasters, few have assembled so many nuanced details into the kind of flood that Larson releases when the storm surges.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
Also by ERIK LARSON
The Naked Consumer
Lethal Passage
ERIK LARSON
ISAAC’S STORM
Erik Larson, a contributor to Time magazine, is the author of The Naked Consumer and Lethal Passage. His work has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, The New Yorker, and other national magazines. He lives in Seattle.
For Chris, Kristen, Lauren, and Erin
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
About the Author
Title Page
Dedication
Atlantic Ocean Map
Galveston Map
The Beach: September 8, 1900
I: The Law of Storms
II: The Serpent’s Coil
III: Spectacle
IV: Cataclysm
V: Strange News
VI: Haunted
Notes
Sources
Acknowledgments
Excerpt from In the Garden of Beasts
Copyright
TELEGRAM
Washington, D.C.
Sept. 9, 1900
To: Manager, Western Union
Houston, Texas
Do you hear anything about Galveston?
Willis L. Moore,
Chief, U.S. Weather Bureau
THE BEACH
September 8, 1900
THROUGHOUT THE NIGHT of Friday, September 7, 1900, Isaac Monroe Cline found himself waking to a persistent sense of something gone wrong. It was the kind of feeling parents often experienced and one that no doubt had come to him when each of his three daughters was a baby. Each would cry, of course, and often for astounding lengths of time, tearing a seam not just through the Cline house but also, in that day of open windows and unlocked doors, through the dew-sequined peace of his entire neighborhood. On some nights, however, the children cried only long enough to wake him, and he would lie there heart-struck, wondering what had brought him back to the world at such an unaccustomed hour. Tonight that feeling returned.
Most other nights, Isaac slept soundly. He was a creature of the last turning of the centuries when sleep seemed to come more easily. Things were clear to him. He was loyal, a believer in dignity, honor, and effort. He taught Sunday school. He paid cash, a fact noted in a directory published by the Giles Mercantile Agency and meant to be held in strictest confidence. The small red book fit into a vest pocket and listed nearly all Galveston’s established citizens—its police officers, bankers, waiters, clerics, tobacconists, undertakers, tycoons, and shipping agents—and rated them for credit-worthiness, basing this appraisal on secret reports filed anonymously by friends and enemies. An asterisk beside a name meant trouble, “Inquire at Office,” and marred the fiscal reputations of such people as Joe Amando, tamale vendor; Noah Allen, attorney; Ida Cherry, widow; and August Rollfing, housepainter. Isaac Cline got the highest rating, a “B,” for “Pays Well, Worthy