Books : Caught In The Path, A Tornado's Fury, A Community's Rebirth
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 977.841
EAN: 9780965577403
Edition: 1st
ISBN: 0965577406
Label: Prairie Fugue Books
Manufacturer: Prairie Fugue Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 173
Publication Date: April 01, 1997
Publisher: Prairie Fugue Books
Studio: Prairie Fugue Books
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
Before storm sirens, before the Weather Channel, before Doppler Radar, a tornado "dropped out of a troubled May sky and twisted its way into our lives forever." On the evening of May 20,1957 three communities south of Kansas City, Missouri were destroyed by a seventy-one mile, F-5 twister. This monstrous storm left in its path five hundred injured, forty-four dead and over a million dollars worth of property damage.
Nothing defines a community more than its reaction to disaster. Caught In The Path is a story of fear and courage, suffering and resiliency. The hardest hit area, four year old Ruskin Heights, was the first post-war tract housing development in the Kansas City area. Like so many of their generation, its residents, mostly first time home buyers in their twenties and thirties, came to Ruskin to raise their baby-boom families with the optimism of the fifties. When the tornado scattered their dreams along its path, they came back, and changed a housing development into a community.
Author Carolyn Glenn Brewer's family was among those caught off guard by the tornado. Most of the houses on her block were leveled to the foundation. She combines her story with extensive interviews from nearly one hundred survivors and period media coverage. The narrative flow of this book reads like fiction, but makes the tornado, and the summer that followed, pulse with reality.
Average Rating: 
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I haven't thought about this tornado in some years, but was reminded about it a few days ago, by someone I've recently met, who was also there.
I was very little at the time, turning three-years-old just a few months before. Even though I was very young, I remember CLEARLY that day and the events that have stayed with me forever.
My dad had loaded us up in the car to take my mom, me and my brother (he was only 6 months old at the time) to do some shopping at the Ruskin ... Read More
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I really think this is a must read for those that face disaster, natural or man-made, or anyone who is obsessed with the weather ;). I found it to be a bit thick, as far as style is concerned, if it weren't for the personal accounts, it would have read a bit too much like fiction, at a risk of making it less "real" to posterity. Don't get me wrong, I loved this book and I found it inspiring as much as anything, but I grew up with the tale of the tornado. My father was in this tornado, and told me ... Read More
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The book was perhaps more interesting since I have not been back to Ruskin. I was also a classmate of Judy Hembree and others in the book. We did not dwell on the tornado aftermath in the 60s, but now realize that it shaped our reaction to crisis.
Nice read.
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This book is a gripping and compelling story of the May 20 1957 tornado in the words of the survivors 20-30 years later. It has personal interest to me as a life-long Kansas City resident, tornado obsessor and '50s buff. In the mid to late 1980s, I resided in apartments which were adjacent to the railroad tracks and just south of the Ruskin shopping center. I figuratively could not put the book down once I started. My only criticism would be the large number of spelling and grammar errors.
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I came across this book on a visit to St. Louis and grabbed it. It may just be the best book ever written about a tornado--it's riveting start to finish and the spotlight is on people and their lives. It's a great movie in print with a terrific plot, memorable characters and a lot of heroism mixed in.
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