The Children's Blizzard by Melanie Benjamin

 

The Children's Blizzard by Melanie Benjamin tells the story of a deadly snowstorm that roared through the Great Plains on January 12, 1888. It hit during the time that many children were in school with teachers little older than themselves.

Benjamin crafted her telling of that day from the actual oral histories of some of the survivors. Sisters Raina and Gerda Olsen, both schoolteachers, are caught in the storm with their students. Anette, a young girl whose mother sold her into servanthood with the Pedersen family, gets lost trying to get home from school with her friend Fredrik, but they end of spending the night in a ravine. Gavin Woodson, a newspaperman, reports the many stories of that day.

An Indianapolis native, Melanie Benjamin is The New York Times bestselling author of The Aviator's Wife and The Swans of Fifth Avenue. She lives with her husband in Virginia. She usually weaves her historical fiction around people, but in this instance, she chose to write about an event.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting November 11, 2020.

I’d like to thank Random House Publishing Group – Ballantine and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review.