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03/2002. 192 pages.
0896724786

The Great Storm: The Hurricane Diary of J. T. King, Galveston, Texas, 1900

By Lisa Waller Rogers

More than a century later, the Galveston hurricane of 1900 is still the largest natural disaster in American history. Pounding most of the historic island city to rubble, and claiming perhaps as many as eight thousand lives, the storm stranded Galveston’s stunned survivors without a bridge to the mainland. When the bridge was rebuilt, amazingly in eleven days, only the most stalwart—like fictive young diarist J.T. King—would choose to stay.

Before the storm, J.T. is a normal, active teenager, swimming, riding his bike, and getting into scrapes with his best friend, Ippy. Though J.T. sleeps on a rickety cot in the pantry of his grandmother’s boardinghouse, life at the corner of Q1/2 and 25th Street is as secure as the sturdy old house itself.

But when the hurricane hits, brave and compassionate J.T. is poised to weather and record for all time the greatest storm any American has ever survived. As deadening winds and rain whip the waves thirty feet high, J.T.’s blood chills at what those waves push ahead of them, “an enormous wall of wreckage, at least three stories tall. . .houses, buggies, furniture,. . .bodies, and—what I feared most—gigantic segments of streetcar track that used to run along the beach. Slowly, the waves were shoving the pile of wood and steel north—and right toward us.”

Extensive primary-source research forms the backbone of J.T.’s thrilling authentic and richly detailed diary. An historic appendix, complete with photos and map, will be useful to young readers and teachers alike.