Curse of the Narrows

Totally engrossing. A heck of a tale, and all true. And the medical detail is wonderful. Chloroform! I am lucky that a Canadian friend gave me this book for Christmas.

My Grandparents, my mother and her two brothers lived through the Halifax Explosion. They were among the few families that survived intact. Ms Mac Donald's book "put flesh" on the stories which we heard as young people. My Grandmother went to her death still with glass in her throatfrom that occasion. Reading the story in this narrative form made it come alive in an interesting way.

This is an exemplary and very interesting bit of historical writing. Oddly enough, I have a couple of other books on massive industrial explosions, including the Texas City disaster in 1947 and the explosion of the Ft. Stikine in Bombay harbor in 1944. MacDonald's book is by far the best. It's well organized, gracefully written, and mediates between the perspectives of the present and the lessons of the past in a particularly sensitive way. Most importantly, I think, it treats those caught up in the disaster with the utmost respect, avoiding the easiest trap for writers of historical non-fiction: the unconscious assumption that people in the past, because they wore funny clothes and had attitudes strange to us, were somehow quaint and not as bright as we are. MacDonald tells this story with great compassion and insight without milking it for melodrama (which would have been very easy). Because she allows the past to speak for itself whenever possible, there are some really thought-provoking bits to those interested in modern disaster planning. I found it particularly interesting that the Red Cross of that day, for example, strongly preferred to work with citizen committees rather than political leaders, regarding the latter as being nearly useless because of the way they start to pursue their own agendas the instant in the initial shock wears off. As a military history buff, I've known about the explosion of the Mont Blanc for a long time. I'm really glad to have such a wonderful book on it.

This bit of history, was unknown to me, untuil I read the book. The author succeeds in transporting you back in time. I felt like I was living within the time frame of the tragic events of this explosion. Very powerfully written. I would highly recommend this book