The Children's Blizzard

By: David Laskin

Narrated by: Paul Woodson

Length: 9 hrs and 34 mins

Publisher's summary

January 12, 1888, began as an unseasonably warm morning across Nebraska, the Dakotas, and Minnesota, the weather so mild that children walked to school without coats and gloves. But that afternoon, without warning, the atmosphere suddenly, violently changed. One moment the air was calm; the next the sky exploded in a raging chaos of horizontal snow and hurricane-force winds. Temperatures plunged as an unprecedented cold front ripped through the center of the continent.

By Friday morning, January 13, some 500 people lay dead on the drifted prairie, many of them children who had perished on their way home from country schools. In a few terrifying hours, the hopes of the pioneers had been blasted by the bitter realities of their harsh environment. Recent immigrants from Germany, Norway, Denmark, and Ukraine learned that their free homestead was not a paradise but a hard, unforgiving place governed by natural forces they neither understood nor controlled.

©2004 David Laskin (P)2016 Tantor

Critic reviews

"A gripping story, well told." ( School Library Journal)

Fascinating nonfiction

I wouldn’t describe myself as a big history or meteorology buff, but I really enjoyed this. It was well-researched, well-written, and well-performed. If you like moody natural disaster stories like the dramatic BBC Yellowstone Volcano documentary, I think you’ll enjoy this.

If you ever wished you were a pioneer...

...this will change your mind. Every negative thing that could happen to a group of people happened to these people. They survived one tragedy after another only to be mowed down by an unexpected winter storm. There was a fair amount of tangenting by the author, but I took that as letting us know the subjects as well as possible and appreciated the inclusion of so much detail. It is amazing there were so many letters and writings still in existence describing the era. I found it very enlightening.

No Stone Unturned

If there is a story to be told from the blizzard most likely it is somewhere in this book. He covers every angle from the signal men to the survivors. Well written and detailed.

Great story and narration.

I had never heard of this and am trying to learn more about the western expansion of the US. This book really brings to life what it was like to settle in the plains. I have a deeper understanding of how hard people lived in the past to have even the basic things.

I would like to give five stars, but...

This book was very close to what I was looking for when I bought it. My complaint revolves around the author trying to cram to much data and mostly irrelevant facts into the book. I think this was a seven hour audio book extended to nearly twelve hours unnecessarily. Overall, I really found it interesting, even some of the excess information, but it would be better if it got to the point with a bit more focus.

great read for a weather buff!

interesting story. very in depth on the weather forecasting for the era which I enjoy but some may find a little dry. the narrator has an unusual style with long pauses at the end of some paragraphs but I got used to it. He has a nice reading voice so it was overall enjoyable.

For a book about weather, this is good

🌨 for a book about weather, this was good. I was pleasantly surprised. I loved hearing about some local historical too.

Great Story

Very factual and riveting all done with superlative narration. I listened to this on the day after the huge winter storm blew in to make it all the more real.

So much info

I liked the detailed history and how he brought info and compassion into this sad story.

Well researched

The author did his homework! This book is wrought with stories handed down over the generations from people who survived this historic storm. He paints a painful and sad tale of life in the rural midwest, taking you back to the Ukraine to follow certain immigrant familes from the start of their journey to the the farmlands where in 1888 they fell victim to this terrible act of god.

The weather forecasting information got a little too technical for me. And the narrator seemed at times to be talking to the point of being out of breath, where he'd kind of spit out the last word of his sentance. I found that a little distracting. But overall this was a great read. I couldn't put it down. I cried at parts. Over a hundred years later and the author leaves you grieving over the losses experienced that awful day.