Books : A World Turned Over : A Killer Tornado and the Lives It Changed Forever
Amazon.com's Price: $12.00 as of 03/18/2010 20:22 EDT details
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
This item ships for FREE with Super Saver Shipping.
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 973
EAN: 9780743247672
ISBN: 0743247671
Label: Simon & Schuster
Manufacturer: Simon & Schuster
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 256
Publication Date: July 08, 2003
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Studio: Simon & Schuster
Related Items:
Alternate Versions: Click to Display
Browse for similar items by category: Click to Display
Editorial Review:
Product Description:
At 4:33 P.M. on March 3, 1966, the skies above Jackson, Mississippi, turned an ominous yellow before going suddenly and violently black. A tornado of the F-5 category -- the most lethal -- struck without warning. It tore roofs off buildings, twisted metal, blew out windows, threw cars into the air, and killed fourteen people -- thirteen of them in a newly built shopping mall, the Candlestick Shopping Center. The fury and destruction ended in seconds, but in those moments the tornado had ripped through the heart of a community, changing lives forever.
In A World Turned Over, Lorian Hemingway returns to the Jackson she knew as a child and tells the story of the Candlestick Tornado, as it came to be known. Vividly re-creating the terrifying day of the tornado, she recounts the miracles and tragedies that also happened that day -- including the story of Donna Durr, who with her baby was lifted in her car seventy-five feet up into the vortex, and of eighteen-year-old Ronny Hannis, who survived to help rescue others, oblivious to the danger to his own life. Decades later, the devastation of that single day continues to reverberate and affect those left behind.
Lyrical and haunting, A World Turned Over is an unforgettable story of awesome destruction -- and a powerful testament to the extraordinary resilience, faith, and heroism of ordinary people visited by fate.
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
The story of the Candlestick tornado and the people who died as a result of it is sad and shocking, and compelled me to keep reading, but I often found myself skimming through parts of this book. Why? Because the author kept repeating the same information and ideas. The book would have been much more readable and would have had a stronger impact if the repetitive passages had been edited out.
If you have a strong interest in learning more about the sad events and loss of life at Candlestick, ... Read More
Rating:  -
I'm afraid I agree with Mr. Rubendall. As a weather afficianado I began WORLD TURNED OVER with enthusiasm, but Ms. Hemingway's self-important florid prose and sticky nostalgia eclipsed the real tragedy that cost many of her chlidhood acquaintances their lives. In dwelling overly long on her own recollections and, one suspects, in trying to ape the style of her famous grandfather (a lack of contractions doesn't make writing more profound, just more pompous!), Ms. Hemingway actually does the Candlestick tornado, ... Read More
Rating: -
I discovered this book through a mention of it in the New York Times Book Review. It caught my eye because I grew up in Jackson, MS. I had heard about the Candlestick Tornado many times in childhood, but knew little about the details. I really enjoyed Ms. Hemingway's ability to evoke the Jackson environment. We also ran behind the fog machine as children, although I lived in North Jackson and there we called it "the mosquito man." Ms. Hemingway writes lyrically, and her descriptions of the people and families affected ... Read More
Rating:  -
Lorian Hemingway's "A World Turned Over" is beautifully, lushly written. In a dreamer's evocative prose, she tells the story of the severe tornado that struck Jackson, Mississippi, in the spring of 1966, destroying the Candlestick Shopping Center. Hemingway, a girl of 10 at the time, had moved away shortly before the storm came.
More than thirty years later, she returned to there to claim her own memories, and to record the recollections of people whose lives had been forever changed, some by the loss of ... Read More
Rating: -
This book seems out of place in the "disaster book" genre. The author seems more concerned with reliving her childhood. Not a very good read.
|
