The Great Hurricane of 1938 hit New England on September 21, 1938. There is some dispute about whether it was a Category 4 or 5, but the damage and lives lost make that distinction a bit irrelevant, in my opinion. There were between 600-800 fatalities, as some bodies were never recovered or were unable to be identified properly. Entire communities vanished in just a few hours. The details of the storm surge in this book were absolutely terrifying.

This book was a fairly short read, at just over 300 pages. The author did a terrific amount of research on weather and this particular event. I have to admit that one of my favorite parts of this book was a poem included about clothes being stolen by the gale force winds and a child's misery over his lost pants. The author did a good job on focusing on people and what happened to them without being excessively grim or insensitive, as can happen sometimes when discussing natural disasters. This was one of the better disaster books I have read in some time.