A Train In The Night: The Tragedy of Lac-Megantic by Anne-Marie Saint-Cerny and Christian Quesnel

A Train In The Night is a graphic novel account of the terrible train accident at Lac-Megantic in Quebec in the summer of 2013. 

The story opens with six of the Lac-Megantic victims talking about the derailment : a young girl asks an older woman if she knows the men responsible for the disaster. The older woman tells her that she doesn't because "They laid their plans hundreds of thousands of kilometers from our town..."

One morning in 2012 the mayor of Nantes had two men from the railway company visit his office. They inform him that from now on there will be only one man on the oil trains passing through - the train will be a "one-man crew". The mayor is stunned that only one man will be on a train with "hundreds of tank cars full of explosive".  They tell him that the minister has already approved such a crew. The mayor asks what will happen if the brakes fail? Their response is that there is an automatic device called a "dead man's switch" which will stop the train. Nantes's mayor doubts the train will stop on the rotten rails. In disbelief, the mayor calls the Minister of Transport's office to confirm what he's heard. They tell him that the Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway is a "first-rate company" which they support and that the one man train is completely safe and has been approved.

 

The story moves far from Nantes to the "great, glorious prairie of North Dakota, home to many Indigenous peoples. They were forced from their land by the U.S. government who broke the treaties. Beneath the vast, fertile plains and the wide, open sky, was "black gold" - oil in the Bakken shale. An estimated thirty to forty billion barrels is in the shale. Instead of buffalo, "17,000 monsters of iron and steel", oil rigs fill the land. The oil is extracted by fracking, in which many toxins are injected into the shale to force out the oil and gas. The fresh air has been contaminated with benzene, formaldehyde, acetaldehyde and hydrogen sulfide, while the water is contaminated with selenium and lead.

It is on June 30, 2013, in North Dakota that the Lac-Megantic story begins. Canadian Pacific Railway controls the shipping in of drilling equipment and the transport out of crude oil to refineries and ports in North Dakota. In 2013, 140,000 tank cars transported oil out of state. On June 30, 2013, 250 DOT-407 tanker trucks travel to New Town, to fill 75 DOT-111 tank cars, part of CP Train No. 606-282. The DOT-111 tank cars are too fragile to transport the oil which has been classified as 1267 Class 3, PGI - the most dangerous and most explosive. They are used though because they are cheap to rent. Instead, the cargo's rating is deliberately altered to PG III, as safe oil, non-explosive. Train No. 606-282 leaves on June 30th for the Irving Refinery in Saint John, New Brunswick, a journey of over three thousand kilometers.

On July 1, CP invoices Irving Oil for Train 606-282. On July 5th, the train arrives in Cote-Saint-Luc, Montreal where Montreal, Maine and Atlantic takes over. It is renamed MMA-002. MMA has been flagged by various transportation agencies in both the U.S. and Canada as having a poor safety record. In the MMA office in Farnham, Quebec, Engine 5017 is put on as the lead on the train despite having serious problems. The train is inspected by Transport Canada and given permission to continue on. Tom Harding is the lone driver on MMA-002 to Lac-Megantic. From there, an American driver will take the train to New Brunswick.

Despite contacting MMA about the ongoing engine problems, Harding is told to continue on. The train arrives at the West Siding Switch at 11:04 PM on July 5th. Engine 5017 is left running unattended with seven brakes applied by Tom Harding. When his taxi arrives, the driver notes to Tom that the 5017 engine is "spitting oil". At 11:38 PM, 911 is called to report a train fire. The Quebec Provincial Police call the MMA Control Centre at 11:50PM and are told that the train contains tanker cars of oil. The firefighters arrive and put out the fire but also shut down Engine 5017. In doing this, the air supply to  to the engine's pneumatic brakes is cut and eventually the remaining air escapes. The other four engines on the train had been shut off and meaning they also have no operational brakes. The stage is now set for the disaster that will claim forty-seven lives, and devastate the town and the lives of the people of Lac-Megantic.

Discussion

A Train In The Night is an informative graphic nonfiction account of the Lac-Megantic railway disaster. Saint-Cerny employs a victim of the disaster as narrator, an older woman who explains to a young child-victim the events leading up to the tragedy and identifying those really responsible. 

The events begin thousands of miles away, in the oil-rich shales of North Dakota. Saint-Cerny, who arrived in Lac-Megantic five days after what she calls "Night Zero", was determined to seek out the truth, after discrepancies began to appear in reports about the accident. As she writes in her piece, Megantic, the sad telling of a capitalist story" at the back of the book, 
"From the start the only official explanation was a simplistic one: The disaster was blamed on the error of just one man, alone in the mountains, who was alleged to have applied an insufficient number of brakes when parking his train. And from the start I decided that this time I would uncover the truth: Who had made it possible for one man, by himself, a single employee on the bottom rung of the hierarchy, to be allowed to leave the keys on the seat of a locomotive hauling seventy-two bombs along defective track and to leave it running all night?"

What Saint-Cerny uncovered is a trail of greed and corruption in the railway and oil industry, pushed by investors and shareholders and enabled by officials and ministers within the U.S. and Canadian governments. From the fracking industry that has poisoned the soil and water in North Dakota, to the deliberate actions of CP and MMA and many other rail companies to prioritize profits over worker safety and environmental protections, Lac-Megantic was an accident waiting to happen.

A Train In the Night sets out the story in two parts: The First Heartbreak and The Second Heartbreak.  The First Heartbreak describes the situation in Nantes with the mayor doing his due diligence in checking to see if MMA and CP were sanctioned to use the one man crew on an oil train travelling on rotted rails. The decisions that will result in the deaths of forty-seven people in Lac-Megantic, were made thousands of miles away and began decades and even centuries before. These decisions have their foundation in greed, without care for the people who lived on the land to the people who work in the various companies involved in resource extraction and shipping. From stripping Indigenous peoples of the rights to their land to access the mineral rights below that land, to modern-day fracking in North Dakota, to the hostile takeover of CP Rail where sky-high dividends and profits were possible as a result of cuts to the workforce and safety measures, each play their part. Readers then follow CP Train 606-282 with its hazardous cargo of oil to Lac-Megantic, Quebec. At each step of the journey, Saint-Cerny informs her readers on the safety rules breached, and how any employee who questioned those breaches was simply told to move along.

In The Second Heartbreak, Saint-Cerny describes the events after the derailment: it is an expose of further corruption, greed and complicity, of lies. and broken laws. It is about the false narrative of the derailment, the miscarriage of justice in blaming one individual who had no recourse to do otherwise, and the successful efforts of the Canadian government to thwart any kind of inquiry or investigation into the tragedy. Saint-Cerny doesn't shrink from naming names, from the unrepentant MMA CEO Edward Burkhardt, to the Canadian Ministers of Transport Denis Lebel (2011-2013) and John Baird (2008-2013), to Hunter Harrison CEO of CP Rail (2012 - 2017) Canadian astronaut and Minister of Transport, Marc Garneau (2015-2021) who blocked both federal and public inquiries into the disaster. 

The author also shows how Milton Freedman's "Shock Strategy" was implemented in the town of Lac-Megantic, by "consultants" portrayed as birds in the novel, whose goal is to remake the town without any real changes to prevent the recurrence of another derailment. This is done while highlighting the voices of the people who simply want what's left of their town back.

Quesnel's illustrations are visceral: for example, the shock of the explosion is done in red, with the images of four of the victims killed by the explosion shown first against a peaceful blue background and in subsequent pages blacked out first on a white page, then against a deep red background with the Sacred Heart of Jesus statue at the bottom. Marc Garneau and John Baird, Canadian government ministers who enabled the removal or reduction of significant safety and environmental protections are portrayed behind a bleeding Maple Leaf. And, in another comic panel, Lady Justice is shown decapitated with a black crow on top, signifying the thwarting of justice in the court trial in which a victim is tried rather than the true perpetrators of the disaster.

The names and ages of the forty-seven victims are also listed on a separate page for readers to know their identities. There is also a section at the back titled Documentary Fragments which explores the inspiration for some of artist Christian Quesnel's artwork.

A Train In The Night is informative and timely considering the recent event in East Palestine, Ohio. As Saint-Cerny points out in her short piece at the back of this graphic nonfiction, "Digging up the truth is one of the few weapons..." that can be used to prevent future tragedies. 

Book Details:

A Train In The Night: The Tragedy of Lac-Megantic by Anne-Marie Saint-Cerny and Christian Quesnel
Toronto: Between The Lines    2022
87 pp.

Luck of the Titanic by Stacey Lee

It's April 10, 1912 and Valora Luck is waiting at the first class gangway to board the White Star's newest ocean line, Titanic. Valora's former employer, Mrs. Sloane had secretly purchased the tickets for them without telling her grasping son and his wife. However, she died suddenly over a week ago and Valora's here now, taking her place.

Dressed in one of Mrs. Sloane's traveling suits, Valora is determined to board Titanic to find and reunite with her twin brother Jamie Luck. He is one of seven Chinese men from the Atlantic Steam Company being transported to Cuba to take on a new job.

Despite her ticket, Valora is refused entry because she is half Chinese. The Chinese Exclusion Act bars Chinese from entering America. Valora lies and tells the officer her lady is expecting her, but to no avail.

Undaunted, Valora manages to board Titanic by hiding underneath a Renault being hoisted into the ship's hold. When Valora is seen climbing out of the hold by a crewman, she is reported to Officer Merry. Luckily she is saved by a Miss Hart who distracts the officer, allowing Valora to concentrate on finding Jamie.

Valora knows from the late Mrs. Sloane's list of passengers, that Mr. Albert Ankeny Stewart, part owner of the Ringling Brothers Circus is on board. Her plan is to find Jamie, convince him to do the routine they choregraphed with Ba months ago for Mr. Stewart and get hired.

Valora is able to find Jamie's cabin, but the Chinese sailors don't trust her and offer no help. However, as she wanders through the ship, Valora stumbles upon Jamie who she finds helping Miss Charlotte Fine with her poodle. Jamie is with two young Chinese boys, Olly and Wink and a young Chinese man, Chow Bo Wah who works as a fireman on Titanic. Valora tells Jamie about her plan for them to go to New York and become circus performers by impressing Mr. Stewart. But Jamie isn't interested and he reminds Valora that he doesn't want to go to America and that it's illegal for them to do so.

Jamie's attitude makes Valora angry but determined. Tired, she makes her way to B-Deck and when confusion arises over the room that Mrs. Sloane would have occupied, Valora is offered a beautiful stateroom after identifying herself as Mrs. Amberly Sloane. With Mrs. Sloane's dress and her face covered by a veil of bees lace, Valora has created the perfect disguise.

As the ship leaves Cherbourg, Valora finds herself settling into her new role when April Hart knocks on her door. April knows who she is and makes Valora the offer of having her wear her own creations from House of July, her haute couture fashion label. At first she refuses but April reveals that she knows exactly who Valora is and suggests they can help each other. She tells Valora she could be the "Merry Widow" and "the mysterious woman in mourning" and that she can help her hide in first class. Valora agrees to model April's outfits in exchange for her finding out about Mr.Stewart. Now all she needs to do is convince Jamie to perform their act for Mr. Stewart so they can start their new life in America. 

Discussion

With Luck of the Titanic, New York Times best-selling author Stacey Lee has crafted another riveting novel for teen readers. She has taken the well known and much written about historical event of the sinking in 1912 of the White Star ocean liner, Titanic and focused in on the little known fact that there were eight Chinese passengers on board the ship. Six of the Chinese survived and sadly these men were shamed for surviving. 

With this detail as her foundation, Lee has created a believable and moving story. The challenge, when using a historical event like the Titanic in which the outcome is well known, is to write a good, plausible story with believable fictional characters whose fate is not known to the reader. Lee accomplishes this remarkably well. Also, as she notes in her Author's Further Note at the back, "The challenge of writing historical fiction lies in creating a fictional story within the confines of the historical record without doing to much damage in the process." Lee has remained faithful to the events of the Titanic disaster while also educating her readers on the discrimination so prevalent against the Chinese, that there was a specific law barring them from entering America and that their efforts to survive the disaster were considered dishonourable and shameful.

In Luck of the Titanic, the main character, Valora Luck is posing as her recently deceased employer, the wealthy Mrs. Amberly Sloane. Valora initially planned to board Titanic as Mrs. Sloane's maid but when that attempt fails she manages to sneak onto the ship - perhaps the most implausible part of the entire story. Her goal is to find her brother Jamie whom she knows is on the ship working on the boilers. Valora wants to go to America and begin a new life there as a circus performer and part of the act she and her brother developed as Valor and Virtue. Jamie is simply not interested in Valora's idea, although he eventually decides to help her. Their plans are never realized as the ship strikes the iceberg and begins to sink. 

However, before the tragedy, Valora comes to realize that what she thinks is best for her might not be the right thing for Jamie. This realization in the cabin of Mr. Stewart of Ringling Bros. comes at the exact moment the Titanic strikes the iceberg. "Life is a balancing act, and the better you get a juggling, the better you get at living. But juggling is not an act of holding tight. It's an act of letting go -- of giving the people you love the time and space to find their own orbit. And it's an act of catching. I'll always be there for Jamie, just as he'll always be there for me." And so Valora makes a deal that works for both her and Jamie, giving him the freedom to live his life as he chooses, not as she wishes. And as it turns out that is for the best as the tragedy of the sinking unfolds.

One contentious detail in the novel is whether Valora would be able to move so easily about on Titanic between first class and the quarters where the Chinese crew are housed. Lee does add a touch of realism to this as Valora's true identity is eventually revealed.

Lee also makes use of considerable foreshadowing in the novel through Valora's dreams and also with the gift of the carved whale that Bo gives Valora. When questioned as to why a whale, Bo tells her, "A whale rules the sea. It goes where it wants without fear. And if troubled, it can become a bird --he flaps his hands, his long fingers moving gracefully -- "beating wings hard enough to stir up the sea. It means being in control of your destiny."

The novel's gorgeous cover is sure to draw readers in but Titanic is so overdone in novels, that the theme may be off putting for some readers. Those that do take up the challenge however, will find an enjoyable, well-crafted story with a very bittersweet ending. The novel includes a List of Characters in her novel and maps of the layout of the R.M.S. Titanic. 

Book Details:

Luck of the Titanic by Stacey Lee
New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons        2021
366 pp.

Missing Mike by Shari Green

Eleven-year-old Cara Donovan's world is turned upside down when her family is forced to flee from raging wildfires and her beloved rust-coloured mutt, Mike goes missing in the chaos.

Cara's town of Pine Grove in British Columbia has been on evacuation alert for days. Cara's mother has her and older sister Sloane pack keepsakes into plastic bins just in case they need to leave quickly.Cara packs her overnight bag with a change of clothes and a few special treasures.

Then one day a police officer shows up at their door. They must evacuate immediately. Cara was in the backyard with her dog, Mike but when she goes to retrieve him, he is no where to be found.Cara is forced into the family, leaving her beloved dog behind. The drive out of Pine Grove is harrowing and slow, with sparks flying across the road, smoke billowing and deer rushing to safety.

Cara is devastated at the loss of her dog Mike. She got him two years earlier at the animal shelter in  Braeburn. While her parents were interested in the cute fluffy goldendoodle puppies, Cara was drawn to Mike, a
"skinny
grown-up
already-got-in-a-fight
dog
with one eye
and a tattered ear?"

The man at the animal shelter raved about Mike's sweet nature and so they took him home.  Once in the city they arrive at the evacuation center. Because Cara's family rescued a cat on their way out of Pine Grove they are taken to the gym where found animals are taken. Immediately Cara questions a woman if she's seen a rust-coloured dog with one eye, despite the fact that it's unlikely Mike is at the shelter. After registering, Cara's family is slated to stay with a host family, Jasmeet Bains and her husband Bill. The Bains have two children, two boys who are away at camp and a foster child, thirteen-year-old Jewel.

Jewel is very sympathetic to Cara's feelings of loss over Mike. Cara believes that she has abandoned Mike, but Jewel tells her
"No," she says,
"he got lost.
It makes a big difference what words you use
to tell something."

Jewel helps Cara to cope by making posters to put up for Mike. She finds a website for pets lost due to the wildfire and posts Mike's picture online. At the evacuation center, Cara and Jewel put up a poster of Mike. As the wildfire advances and consumes parts of Pine Grove, Cara becomes increasingly distraught about Mike. She imagines terrible scenarios and eventually makes some poor choices that endanger herself and Jewel. As Cara struggles to keep faith and be hopeful, she wonders, will she ever see her beloved Mike again?

Discussion

Missing Mike is a timely novel that explores the meaning of family, the resilience of the human spirit and the importance of community in times of disaster.Green uses wonderfully descriptive free verse captures the danger Cara and her family experience as they travel to safety with the flames raging around them.

"It's dark as night
--black smoke so thick
I can barely see the car ahead of us.
Wind hurls glowing embers
across the road
orange sparks fly
like hailstones made of fire.
Sweat beads on my forehead."

The wildfire forms the backdrop for the story of an eleven-year-old girl who has inadvertently left behind the one thing most precious to her, her beloved dog Mike. Mike isn't a cute little puppy but a dog who has had a rough past as evidenced by his torn ear and missing eye. Despite his fear of coyotes which leads Cara's family to believe that he was once attacked by them, Mike has stood his ground against one to protect Cara. He is special to Cara.

While Cara and her family stay with a host family, the Bains, Cara begins to considers what defines home. When Cara first leaves Pine Grove, she is pre-occupied with the loss of her dog Mike. She doesn't worry too much about her home, after all it will still be there after the fire she thinks. While working on a crossword puzzle, Jewel asks Cara for a 5 letter word for "home" and reveals that she "lived in a car once and it was home." Jewel explains to a shocked Cara that although she's lived in many houses after the car, the car was home because she was with her mom. However, now Jewel feels it isn't necessary for her to have her mother with her for a place to be called home. Instead being safe and wanted make the Bains' house "home". Cara wonders if it possible to have a home without family.

Later on at the shelter, Cara meets her music teacher Miss Francesca Passerini who
"lives in a house surrounded
by overgrown gardens
chock full of flowering plants
and an unusual number
of bird feeders."
In other words, Miss Francesca has a beautiful home which contains her music and her beloved piano which she might lose to the wildfire. But she tells Cara that it doesn't matter because she still has her music inside her. Cara realizes that  "music is Miss Francesca's word for home."

Cara and her older sister Sloane meet a young single father, Wesley who has a little daughter named Angeline.When Cara questions him about if he loses his home, Wesley tells her
"But you know what?" he says softly. "This girl
has my heart.
As long as I've got her
I'm home."
For Wesley being with his daughter is all that matters and that is "home". Remembering this, Cara wonders if having family is what really matters and is what defines home.

When they learn that their house has been destroyed by the wildfires Cara wonders,where they will go and where they will belong if they have no home, no place that's theirs. If a house with it's rooms "where a family lived, shared celebrations and sadness, big moments and boring days" is nothing but a pile of bricks is home? Cara wonders if
"...there's something that remains
through it all
like if Wesley has Angeline
Miss Francesca still hears music
in her heart
Heather is with her relatives
and Jewel is safe
and wanted."

Thinking back on her and Jewel's struggle with the crossword puzzle to find that elusive word for home, Cara realizes that home means something different for every one.
"Turns out
home isn't always with family
but often it is.
It isn't always a place
but sometimes it is.
It isn't always within your grasp
but when you find it
you know to
hold on."

For Cara home is love, friendship and loyalty - something she has with her family and Mike (who she finds waiting at their burned out home). Cara realizes she hasn't lost her "home" at all, instead she's discovered what home really is for her. It is the not only her family but the bond she has with her beloved dog, Mike.

In light of the many wildfires in the past few years, especially in British Columbia, Alberta and northern Ontario, Green's book is very timely. Missing Mike will help young readers understand just how devastating disasters like wildfires can be for those who experience them. Cara and her family lose everything except what they were able to pack before evacuating and at one point Cara wishes she had packed certain special momentos. Maintaining an attitude of hope throughout their ordeal was a struggle for Cara and her family. The novel also portrays how the efforts of the local community at large helped make this challenging time more bearable for Cara and her family.

Overall, Missing Mike is a well written, touching short novel in free verse by Canadian author Sheri Green. Younger readers who love dogs and animal stories in general will enjoy Missing Mike.

Book Details:

Missing Mike by Shari Green
Toronto: Pajama Press     2018
245 pp.

DVD: Deepwater Horizon

Deepwater Horizon is a cinematic dramatization of the oil rig disaster that occurred on the night of April 20, 2010 in the Gulf Coast in which eleven workers were killed and seventeen injured.

The Deepwater Horizon rig was drilling an exploratory well in the Macondo Prospect, a potential oil and gas prospect in Miocene-age sediments located approximately forty-one miles offshore of Louisiana. Ironically, the prospect takes its name from the fictional town of Macondo in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novel One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Drilling in the prospect was initially begun in 2009 by Transocean's Marianas semi-submersible rig but was discontinued after the rig was damaged by Hurricane Ida i the fall. In February of 2010,  Deepwater Horizon, a dynamically positioned ultra deep-water semi-submersible rig resumed drilling the prospect. It is important to remember that Deepwater Horizon was to look for oil, not pump it out of the ground. In April of 2010, with the drilling operation forty-three days behind schedule, disaster struck. What followed was a serious of human and mechanical mistakes that led to the disaster.

When an oil well is drilled a bit is used to drill through the rock. Each section drilled has casing installed to line the hole and then cement is poured to seal the space between the casing and the rock wall. This process is repeated again and again as the well is drilled deeper using smaller casing. When drilling a well, heavy mud is pumped into the well to lubricate the bit and also to carry bits of rock (called chips) to the surface. The mud also has another function. Hydrocarbons - that is oil and gas in the rock formations are under tremendous pressure thousands of feet below the earth's surface. When an opening is created as when drilling, the oil and gas will flow out of the rock to the surface unless there is a countering force.That force is provided by the static pressure of the mud which keeps the gas and oil from flowing out of the rock, up the drill pipe to the surface. If the pressure exerted by the mud is not sufficient the well will "kick" that is gas and oil will flow upwards. The hydrocarbons can also flow upwards if the well has been damaged or if "the cement placed between the casing protecting the drill string and the rock wall of the well isn't tight." In this case methane gas can flow up the drill string or outside of the cement casing and flow upwards with catastrophic results.

Deepwater Horizon

Because BP was behind schedule, drilling proceeded too quickly and the well was fractured at around 13,000 feet. The pipe had to be pulled two thousand feet back, the damaged section sealed and drilling restarted along a slightly different angle into the oil/gas bearing formation. With the drilling now finished, to secure the final section of the well, BP decided to go cheap and use a single string of casing from the wellhead to the bottom of the well. This was risky because it meant that there would be a significant chance gas would leak out of the formation. (Generally single casing is used on shallower wells on land.) Even worse, BP did not use enough centralizers or collars that ensure the pipe is in the middle of the bore hole so that when the cement is poured around it there are no gaps and therefore no risk of gas leakage. Both of the options were used to cut time and cost. BP also did not have Schlumberger run a cement bond log, deciding it wasn't needed. This test is routine on a well to test the integrity of the cement bond between the well casing and the formation. The blowout preventer (BOP) which can be used to shut down a runaway well was also damaged making it useless. Added to this was the apparent misreading of the negative pressure test which is done on a well to determine the integrity of the well. All of these factors plus many more contributed to the making of the disaster..


The movie, directed by Peter Berg,  focuses on a few people in the disaster - Transocean's Chief Electronics technician Mike Williams played by Mark Wahlberg with Kate Hudson cast as his wife Felicity, Transocean's offshore installation manager  (OIM) Jimmy ("Mr. Jimmy") Harrell (Kurt Russell), Andrea Fleytas (Gina Rodriguez) who was a Dynamic Positioning Operator and Caleb Holloway (Dylan O'Brien) who was a drill crew floorhand. Also included were BP executives, nighttime rig supervisor Donald Vidrine (John Malkovich) and daytime rig operator Robert Kaluza. While the movie makes Vidrine out to be the villain in fact as indicated above, it was a smorgasbord of many failures, both human and mechanical that were involved in creating the disaster. 

While much media attention has been on the ecological disaster associated with the oil spill that followed, little focus has been on the real people who survived the disaster and the eleven rig workers who died that night. Berg wanted to create a movie about the human tragedy behind the disaster.  In an interview with the L.A. Times Berg stated: “To this day, when people think of Deepwater Horizon, they only think of an oil spill — they think of an oil spill and dead pelicans ...Obviously that oil spill was horrific,” he continued. “But the reality is 11 men died on that rig and these men were just doing their jobs and many of them worked hard trying to prevent that oil from blowing out and it was certainly not their fault. As it pertains to the families of those men who lost their lives, I want them to feel as though another side of that story was presented, so that whenever someone talks about the Deepwater Horizon or offshore oil drilling, people don’t automatically go to ‘oil spills.’ ”

To recreate the events, an 85% scale replica of the Deepwater Horizon rig was built on an abandoned lot in Louisiana and placed in a enormous water tank.The replica was made as accurately as possible and the set was one of the largest ever made for a movie. It was set on fire to mimic the real explosions and inferno of the disaster. The realism of the set made it possible to give viewers some idea of just how horrific things were on the rig during the blowout. A 2010 New York Times article written by David Barstow, David Rhode and Stephanie Saul became the main source for the development of the movie script.

From the very beginning, the movie adaptation portrays a culture of disorganization, risk taking and poor maintenance on the rig. When Mike Williams, Jimmy Harrell and Andrea Fleytas arrive on Deepwater Horizon they are astonished to learn that the Schlumberger team has been sent home without running the cement log. No one seems to know why the log was not run and they are told that the drilling is finished and they are going to cap the well.  Furthermore there are many things on the rig that do not work - the phone system is out, toilets are backed up etc. After his own brief investigation with rig staff, Mr. Jimmy decides to confront BP executives, Don Vidrine and Robert Kaluza about the cement log and while doing so, Williams reels off a list of items on the rig that don't work and are in need of repair.

The movie also portrays the complex and often difficult relationship between the various partnering companies. Mr. Jimmy and Mike Williams show considerable disdain for the BP staff who they see as interested only in saving money at the expense of rig safety. Mr. Jimmy who works for Transocean the owners of Deepwater Horizon has nothing but contempt for Vidrine. It is also apparent that many of the rig's crew respect Mr. Jimmy.

One of the best scenes in the movie occurs early on when Mike is preparing to leave for his three weeks on the rig and he has breakfast with his daughter Sydney. Sydney is working on a school project that will explain her father's job and how he "tames" the dinosaurs. The scene is both an analogy for drilling an oil well and a foreshadowing of the disaster. Using a coke can which her father shakes, Sydney explains to her father that he tames the dinosaurs by drilling for oil. Sydney rams a metal rod into her can of coke and plugs it with honey - but after she finishes her explanation, the pop explodes out of the metal tube and onto the table, mimicking a well blowout. One of the trailers released for the movie shows this scene:

For the most part the movie is a fairly accurate portrayal of the situation on the rig and the disaster that follows. Williams didn't rescue Mr. Jimmy as in the movie but both men were seriously injured, Williams was left on the rig and did jump over ten stories into the ocean, the survivors did say the Lord's Prayer on the deck of the Damon B. Bankston and the rig was entirely engulfed in flames. The are minor inaccuracies such as when Mike Williams is given a dinosaur tooth by one of the rig staff for his daughter. Retrieval of a large fossil would not be possible because it would be destroyed by the drill bit. There is some dramatic license taken in the movie such as showing bubbles of methane gas escaping from the seabed around the borehole, suggesting to the viewing audience that the well is about to "blow".

Nevertheless Deepwater Horizon is a great action movie, filled with many tense moments and good acting. If anything the movie will help viewers understand the tragedy, learn a bit about the oil industry and remember the human story that seems mostly forgotten. Media focused on the 210 million gallons of oil that leaked into the Gulf of Mexico but Deepwater Horizon helps us to remember the eleven men who died that night. It was both a human tragedy and an ecological disaster.

For those interested in a more detailed description of exactly what is believed to have happened to cause the Deepwater Horizon blowout a video by Encyclopedia Britannica at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOK9J0wETYo  explains the details. 

Popular Mechanics also has a great article "Special Report: Why the BP Oil Rig Blowout Happened" (https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a6065/how-the-bp-oil-rig-blowout-happened/) that is worth reading.

Adrift by Paul Griffin

Adrift is an intense psychological thriller about a group of five teens adrift in the Atlantic Ocean for fifteen days. Griffin's portrayal of their attempts to survive is both gritty and realistic and doesn't have a happily-ever-after ending.

Seventeen-year-old Matthew Holloway and his best friend, John Costello, have jobs at Heron Hills state park at Montauk, Long Island.  Matthew's dream is to attend Yale studying forestry and become a ranger in Utah or Alaska while his friend wants to be an electrician. While Matthew fixes boardwalks and lifeguard chairs, John works as a mechanic in the park's maintenance shop.

Matt and John have grown up in Woodhull, a working class suburb but attended different high schools. On Sundays, the two make extra money by purchasing soda and ice cream treats and selling them to tourists on the beach. 

One day, Matt let his parents know everything is going well as they head out to the beach. Pushed out of their usual territory, the two head over to Sully's Inn and its private beach. There they meet three wealthy sunbathers, Driana Gonzaga from New York and Estefania (Stef) and Joao (Jojo) Martins from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Driana invites Matt to a party at her house on Tuesday evening.

On Tuesday evening despite John's reluctance, Matt and John both attend Driana's party at her parents beautiful villa. During a walk on the beach, Driana tells Matt that she is taking a year off after having graduated from the very expensive Blessed Heart High School and will be working at animal control. Driana loves animals and wants to be a vet. Matt finds himself attracted to her; "She was the rarest of kids my age: comfortable in her own skin. At ease with her money but not afraid to make fun of herself for it. Being around that balance of confidence and humility lit me up. She was plain cool. She was perfect."

As John and Matt are leaving, Driana asks if anyone has seen Stef. They find her phone and jeans on the stairs leading to the beach and realize that she's gone wind surfing. It is night and the moon is out. Looking out over the ocean they barely spot Stef, riding the wind out to sea. Against the objections of John, Jojo decides to take out a fiberglass boat to retrieve her. Dri and Jojo get into the boat but John attempts to convince Matt that this is a terrible idea. There's no light on the boat, no radio, and it's not made for the strong windy conditions they are experiencing. Matt is determined to go because of Dri and John reluctantly follows him into the boat.

They reach Stef just as her sail goes down and see that she is being circled by a large dolphin. Just before getting into the boat, Stef attempts to hug the dolphin who bucks its tail into the Windsurfer, breaking her arm. Dri and Matt dive into the water and get her into the boat. Stef is unconscious and bleeding from the head and her arm has suffered a compound fracture below the elbow. Matt manages to revive her but the artery in her arm is bleeding out fast. He ties a tourniquet made from an old towel around her arm, staunching the blood. Matt knows she will lose the arm if they don't get back to land soon.

Now out of cell phone range and unable to contact parents or the coast guard, they try to use the engine to get back to shore but it is out of gas. Matt retrieves the surfboard and they lash Stef to the board to prevent her from moving when she awakens. Matt knows she will be in tremendous pain from her broken arm and she also has a concussion. Meanwhile John sets to taking apart the engine in the hopes of repairing it.  He succeeds but tells them they do not have enough gas to get back to shore and that they need to save it. All four teens realize that it might be at least a day or more before anyone determine that they are missing and they won't know where they have gone.

Jojo and Dri are horrified at John's seemingly cold view of Stef's prospects of surviving if they do not get to shore soon. John blames Stef for her stupid choice to go windsurfing at night, while Dri tries to defend her cousin whom she says has had a hard life. As Stef's condition continues to deteriorate, the other four teens keep a look-out with binoculars for passing ships.

The next day is brilliantly sunny and hot, so hot that everyone suffers from sunburn. Dri successfully rigs up a makeshift distiller to extract drinking water from the sea water. They see a sailboat and a speed boat but are unable to make contact. Stef's arm continues to worsen, although she becomes lucid for a time. During the first day Dri presses Matt about the bullet scars on his left shoulder. Jojo thanks Matt for saving Stef's life and notes how steady John is in a crisis.

It is at this point that the police begin to look into the disappearance of Matt and John because Matt's friend car which he borrowed, has not been returned. When the group wakes up on the second day they find that Stef has died. While Dri is dazed, Jojo is deeply upset at his girlfriend's death. Matt cannot seem to feel anything while John appears unaffected. After collecting water from a heavy downpour and also drinking as much as they can, Matt and Dri slip into the water beside the boat to cool off in the afternoon heat. Matt tells Dri how he came to have the bullet wounds in his back.

Having traced the car to the home of Rafael Gonzaga, police continue to look into both Matt and John. They now consider this a missing person case that includes Driana and Estefania as well as Jojo and begin searching the beach. On the boat the four remaining teens have wrapped Stef's body in the windsurfing sail. However, now they are plagued by flies which swarm around the body and bite the survivors. Jojo is covered in bites because he refuses to leave Stef's body or to place it into the sea. Eventually Dri convinces him to let her go and they place Stef on the windsurfer board and push her out onto the ocean.

By day five, John is working on creating a primitive harpoon in the hopes they can spear fish. Jojo's fly bites are not healing mainly because he can't stop picking at them. Jojo eventually reveals to Matt that he not only takes medication for his dermatitis but also mood stabilizers. By day seven Matt senses that a bad feeling has come into the boat. "It wasn't exactly anger. A menace, maybe. I didn't think Jojo was causing it, but he was picking up on it." John tells Matt that things will change in the boat if they do not find food soon. When Matt questions him, John tells him that the desire to survive can make a person do terrible things. "No food and the drive to survive can make a person do things he never thought he'd be able to do, especially when he's losing his mind. I'm telling you Matt, watch your back. Dri's too." John is warning Matt that Jojo is becoming increasingly unstable and may become dangerous. 

Just how much longer the four can hold out without food and almost no water is questionable. Even worse is the possibility of dangers they may face in the coming days; sharks, severe storms, dehydration and that one of them may become so dangerous that the unthinkable might need to be considered? Can they hold out until help arrives?

Discussion

Adrift uses the lifeboat trope in which a group of people, in this case, five teens, adrift in a boat with little hope of immediate rescue, find their situation so dire that they begin to consider killing one of them to save the others. In this novel, Jojo is becoming increasingly angry and erratic. Trapped in a boat adrift in the Atlantic Ocean, Jojo finds himself suddenly off his medications and having to cope not only with the life threatening physical conditions but also with the loss of his beloved girlfriend. As Jojo becomes increasingly unstable, John, Matt and Dri begin to argue over what to do with him. While Dri tries to support Jojo emotionally, John, who is practical, considers the possibility that they may have to kill him before he attacks one of them. 

When they realize that the land they drove the boat towards is merely an island of plastic, Matt notes that this is when Jojo begins to act mean. John tries to be cautious about whether or not they should eat the rotted fish they find, but Jojo will not have John telling him what to do. Jojo tells him, "Watch yourself, John. You're making me angry." Later on as the sore on his leg is worsening, Jojo begins to lose hope. "Hope is so very draining. It's a bore, actually." He becomes morbid when Matt asks him about his medications telling him that he doesn't believe him being happy is the natural way things should be. "I think this, here, right now, the way I'm feeling: This is the true me. And I am so very angry. I don't even have the courage to kill myself. Who would build such a world? Tell me. A world where tests like this are commonplace?"

When John suggests that they be "proactive" rather than wait for Jojo to hit one of them with the hammer, Matt argues that his wounds will eventually kill him. But John counters, "Then if he's dead anyway, why not put him out of his misery?" Dri argues that Jojo is not himself and she challenges John about how he is viewing Jojo and their situation.
"I know where I am," she said. "I know exactly. And I'm not so lost that I don't know what I am too."
"And what's that?"
"Still human."
When Dri sticks up for Jojo, John maintains that their difficult situation now has stripped away the veneer to reveal the real people they are. "Why did those dudes shoot into my father's van? He's built that way. At heart, that's who he is. Sure, he's everybody's pal when things are easy, but turn up the heat a little, and now you're seeing the real Jojo." John tells Dri she doesn't know the real Jojo, only the medicated version of him.
Dri tells John that if they do murder Jojo it is something they will live with for the rest of their lives if they survive. "I'm scared of what I become if I murder somebody,"

John is correct in that the experience does reveal the strengths and weakness of each of the characters; John is a quiet effective leader ready to do whatever is necessary to survive, Matt with his knowledge of first aid is a protector and caring person, while Dri is motivated by doing what is right no matter what the circumstances.

Underlying the main story is a second story involving John, Matt and the murder of John's father. Gradually, during the time in the boat, the horrific story is revealed. This event is the main motive for John following Matt into the boat - John believes he owes Matt for saving his life.

Not unexpectedly, being adrift in the Atlantic for fifteen days changes the survivors forever. They are unable to continue their friendships because their mere presence reminds each other of what they experienced. It's interesting to consider what makes some people so resilient in the face of catastrophe while others are completely undone. While John continues with his life plan to become an electrician, both Matt and Dri find themselves deeply changed. Instead of becoming a forest ranger, Matt works as an EMT.

Griffin spares his readers none of the gory details and some passages are especially graphic and therefore entirely realistic. His reason for placing the teenagers out in the ocean is entirely plausible (fact: teenagers at a party do stupid things). Post rescue: it is unlikely Matt, John and Dri would have been able to eat much of anything once they were rescued. Nor would they be allowed to do so. Adrift is a good read, with an appealing cover, that should definitely be followed up with something light.

Book Details:

Adrift by Paul Griffin
New York: Scholastic Press     2015
228 pp.

All We Have Is Now by Lisa Schroeder

All We Have Now is about two homeless teens who struggle to come to terms with their lives in the face of an impending catastrophe that will wipe out the United States.

The novel opens approximately 28 hours, 25 minutes before an asteroid is expected to impact in the state of Idaho. The government has revealed that an asteroid coming from the direction of the sun is due to impact the Earth causing annihilation for millions and widespread destruction. People have fled the state and surrounding areas and many people have even fled the continental United States.

 Vince Mason and Emerson Steele are two homeless teens who have been living on the street for the last year and a half. In light of the impending disaster, they are considering ending their lives. With no money, no car and having left their families they have no way to escape the impact zone. Their lives have not be great up until this point. "Before, they slept in parks, in alleyways, in backyard sheds. They scrounged for food in restaurant dumpsters, or begged for money on the street. Every day, it was about survival. It was a dirty, ugly life, but they became pros at living that way. " Now with people having left Portland in an attempt to escape the asteroid, Vince and Emerson have been able to find a room in a shelter. They been able to clean themselves and not be ashamed of how they look. They decide rather than wait for the asteroid to hit they will jump off Vista Bridge also known as Suicide Bridge, which has nothing but "cold, hard pavement" beneath it.

However when they reach the bridge, they find a man waiting, presumably intending on jumping. The man introduces himself to Vince and Emerson as Carl and asks them to let him help them. After someone helped him realize his dream of being a fireman, he has helped four other people with their own wishes. But he needs one more and Vince and Emerson are that last wish. Vince tells Carl that every day since he's been on the streets he's wanted money for food, clothes and a place to stay. Carl gives Vince his wallet filled with cash and tells him "Feel rich in these final hours."

After doing this Carl stands on the bridge watching the beautiful sunset before he answers a call from his wife, Trinity. She has returned from saying good-bye to her parents and is waiting for Carl at their home. Carl tells her he gave away both his car and his wallet and Trinity tells him that her car is out of gas. He promises to try to find a way home and asks Trinity to see if she can find a car. Carl tries phoning friends but is unable to contact anyone who can help him and eventually cell service fails.

Meanwhile Emerson and Vince learn that the man who gave them the money is Carl Ragsdale, who is fifty-one years old and lives in Lake Oshwego. They wonder why he isn't with his family at this terrible time. Vince decides that he'd like to do what Carl was doing - help people, give them one last wish. The first person they encounter is a sixteen year old boy named Hayden who can sing and play guitar and who has always wanted to be in a band. After finding food at an abandoned tavern, they travel to a karaoke bar which has remained open. Hayden gets his wish to sing in front of the crowd in the bar. Having accomplished what he wanted, Hayden decides to return home.

Carl has taken to walking since he is unable to find a ride in the direction of his home. He meets Jerry, an elderly man and together they break into a bakery that Jerry's wife used to work at.  After eating pastries and drinking coffee, Jerry falls asleep and Carl is unable to awaken him. Believing he has died, he decides to take Jerry's car and drive home to Trinity. However, before he can get to the car, Carl is knocked unconscious.

The next person Emerson and Vince meet is Jackie, an unmarried career woman who was supposed to travel to Paris in October. At first Jackie can't find her car but when she does, Vince offers to drive her to a special place as a surprise. That place turns out to be a French cafe whose owner, a "good-looking twentysomething guy" named Phillipe, lets them in. While dancing and eating french pastries he and Jackie end up falling for each other. Having accomplished their mission to help yet another person, Emerson and Vince leave taking Jackie's BMW with her blessing. Their next stop is the Multnomah County Library where they read picture books and encounter a woman, Rima and her daughter, Inika who believe that everything will be back to normal in a few days.  This leads Emerson to ask Vince if he believes that there really is an asteroid.

As the deadline for the impact looms closer and closer, Carl struggles to recover from a serious concussion. Helped by a woman and her daughter who coincidentally are Emerson's mother and sister, Carl tries to return the favour and help them locate Emerson. In return he hopes to make it home to his wife.  Vince and Emerson struggle to deal not only with their personal relationship but also with the possibility that things may not be as they seem. Vince also tries to push Emerson to set things right with her mother before it's too late. But some things are not so easily repaired.

Discussion

In All We Have Is Now, author Lisa Schroeder asks her readers to consider what would happen if we had only a few short hours left to live? What would be our regrets, our priorities, our wishes and our hopes? To accomplish this she weaves two storylines together, that of Emerson and her friend Vince and that of Carl Ragsdale. Although they all meet early on in the story and then experience separate journeys, Schroeder cleverly reunites them at the novel's conclusion, showing how we are all interconnected in one way or another. Emerson's narrative is the primary one told in both prose and short poems which are quite lovely.

All We Have Is Now is story about living life to the fullest in the time we have been given. We are reminded to appreciate what we have in life and not to focus on what is missing. When Hayden meets Vince and Emerson he tells them he left home because "I-I couldn't stay there. With them. I just...I couldn't, you know? I snuck out the bathroom window." However after singing in the karaoke bar Hayden realizes that he has a family, that his parents have been good to him and that his slipping out the bathroom window was not justified. He decides to return home hoping for forgiveness and to redeem himself. He is in some ways, the prodigal son.

Making the most of each day we have is portrayed through the actions of the two main characters. When Vince and Emerson meet the twelve-year-old twins, Kailee and Kendall who have been abandoned, they drive them home and take them to an amusement park to distract them from what is happening in their lives and from the larger even of the asteroid impact. Kendall tells them that she wishes things would end happily and that she's afraid about what the future holds. Vince tells them, " 'No, see, you guys are looking at it all wrong...The amount of time isn't important. A hundred minutes or a hundred years. Whatever, it doesn't matter. Just make it count.' When Kailee responds that it's difficult to not be angry about losing out, Vince advises her '...to ask yourself if that's how you want to spend the rest of your life.' " 

Like Kailee, Carl too is struggling to deal with the possibility that everything will end. As he's eating an apple at Emerson's mother's home, he finds "all he can taste is regret." The regret is that he's found something he loves but instead of savouring it in the moment, he is focused on how he will never taste another apple again after that night.

When Emerson takes Vince to a carousel so he can experience a memory he had of his mom so long ago, she asks him if he's mad that he didn't get more time with his mother. But Vince tells her, "Maybe sometimes I am, but I really try not to be. I mean, it's wasted energy, wishing for more. I'd rather spend my time making wishes that might come true."

Throughout the novel, Vince is determined that Emerson contact her mom whom she is estranged from.  One of the ways Emerson has been coping with her mother's rejection has been to ask Vince what her mother and her older sister Frankie are doing. This leads him to describe an imaginary scenario that is positive and happy. However Emerson's fear that her mother hates her is overwhelming. If she doesn't call she can pretend otherwise. "What if her mom hung up on her? What if her mom hated her so much, she didn't even want to know where she was or if she was okay? As long as she stayed out of touch, Emerson could pretend her mother missed her a tiny bit."  As the time of impact creeps closer, Vince convinces Emerson that she needs to go see her family, no matter what she believes their response will be. He doesn't want her to experience regret. "Look, I just know that once you see them, once they see you, nothing else will matter. The past is the past. It's gone, you know? It doesn't matter anymore...All we have is now. Right now."

Like Carl eating the apple, Emerson realizes that she doesn't want to die because she's come to the conclusion that she has something to live for. She has come to realize that she loves Vince and he loves her. Emerson feels "ever-increasing terror about what comes next, and anger at having to go way too soon."  Similarly, Emerson's mother, Rhonda, is also experiencing deep regret over her actions towards her daughter. Her regret is so thick that "Carl wishes he could just cut it away for her."

At a conspiracy theory meeting about the asteroid, Emerson's view begins to change with small things at first. When she is given a piece of pumpkin pie with whipped cream she focuses on how delicious it tastes. Emerson confronts the hurt she has caused her older sister, Frankie when she ran away, and this leaves her filled with regret. Vince tells her she cannot change the past and that there has been good that has come out of her choices too such as their meeting and the good they have done others in the time remaining. Emerson states, "I just can't let myself think about the stuff I wish I could change...You were right. Regret hurts."

One of the many poems which are part of Emerson's narrative, A Way of Life, expresses what Emerson has come to understand, that we must live life not looking back, nor looking ahead. Instead, "Each minute, each hour, spent doing, spent living." In contrast to this are Rhonda and Frankie, who are fighting over what has happened in the past to Emerson. As it turns out, Vince was right; Emerson's reunion with her family helps both her and them forgive and heal. Regrets are in the past.

Schroeder has written an appealing short novel with a timely message about what's important in life.  Well done and an engaging read!

Book Details:
All We Have Is Now by Lisa Schroeder
Point, an imprint of Scholastic       2015
266 pp.

Torn Away by Jennifer Brown

"It was like the tornado had ripped through my house and torn me way."

In Torn Away, Jennifer Brown explores the issues of loss, grief and the meaning of family  during a  life-changing tragedy. Brown was inspired to write Torn Away as a result of the events in Joplin, Missouri in 2011. On May 22, of that year, the city of Joplin was devastated by an EF-5 tornado that resulted from a supercell thunderstorm originating in Kansas.One hundred and fifty-eight people died and over one thousand were injured. This tornado was one of the most deadly to ever strike the midwest United States.

Sixteen year old Jersey Cameron lives with her mom, her stepdad Ronnie and her little stepsister, Marin in Elizabeth, Missouri. Jersey's biological father, Clay Cameron, abandoned the family when she was a baby. And her mother's parents disowned her when she became involved with Clay.

Elizabeth is under frequent tornado warnings, so when one comes up after school, at first Jersey doesn't really pay attention. Her mother and  stepsister, Marin are at dance class and her step father is at work. Even when the power goes out, Jersey still doesn't blink. However, the weather worsens and Jersey decides to seek shelter in the basement.

As she lays terrified beneath the large pool table, Jersey hears the roar of the tornado as it sweeps down upon Elizabeth. After what seems like forever, the tornado passes on and Jersey is left battered and bruised but alive. She has no idea yet that her life has been changed forever.

Her neighbour, Kolby emerges from his home, relatively unscathed, although his home, like Jersey's, is in ruins. Their entire street is wiped out along with many other areas of Elizabeth. Eventually Jersey learns that her mother and Marin have been killed, two of at least one hundred other fatalities. Ronnie has survived, but it soon becomes apparent that he is not up to the task of taking care of Jersey nor getting their lives in order again. Distraught and overwhelmed, Ronnie contacts Jersey's father's family in Castor City asking them to take in Jersey.

Jersey is horrified to learn that she will be going to live in Castor City with her grandparents, Billie and Harold. She will be leaving her friends and the only home she knows. In desperation, Jersey contacts her friend Dani, and begs her to ask her mother to take her in. While waiting for Dani to help her, Jersey is picked up by her grandparents and driven to Caster City.

It quickly becomes apparent that no one at her father's parent's home wants her at the house in Caster City. Her grandparents are cold and insensitive and she discovers that her father, along with his wife, Tonette and their two daughters, Lexi and Meg are uncaring and mean, her father an alcoholic and crude man who tries to claim he is not her father. Jersey struggles to survive in a completely dysfunctional home and soon things get completely out of hand. Will Jersey's life ever be right again?

In an attempt to save herself, Jersey runs away and is finally picked up by Ronnie and taken to her mother's parent's home in Waverly. It is here that Jersey just might have the chance to recover from the terrible tragedy that has upended her entire world.

Brown has written a very realistic story about how life can change in the blink of eye, and how without friends or family to help, such loss can have the potential to destroy a person. When Jersey loses her family, she discovers that she has no one to turn to. Her best friend's mother won't get involved to help her. Ronnie is unable to cope and so he passes her on to the only people he believes will take Jersey - her father's family. However, it is immediately apparent that this family has too many of its own problems to adequately help Jersey cope with the loss she has experienced; in fact, they seem to not even acknowledge that loss, which makes it even worse for Jersey. The only person who appears to understand is Clay's sister, Terry, but she is not in a position to help Jersey. Clay and Grandmother Billie's sense of duty only add to the hurt that Jersey is feeling.

Adding to Jersey's emotional turmoil is the discovery of new information about her father, his family and her mother and father's relationship. These revelations continue even as she is moved to the Berry's (her mother's parents) home in Waverly. This leads Jersey to act out in anger towards her friends and especially towards her father and both sets of grandparents.

Another factor contributing to this bad behaviour is Jersey's lack of a safe environment to share her grief and her anger. This gradually changes when she goes to live with the Berry's. However, Jersey, at first, doesn't recognize this safe loving home for what it is because her mother has trained her to hate them as a result of what happened between her mother and her parents many years ago.

"The eight-year-old inside of me was afraid to breathe in this house, afraid of catching the oppression Mom had always talked about. Afraid of being judged. How did I know who this woman really was? How did I know she would turn on me the way Dani's mom had, or give up on me the way Clay had, lie to me the way Mom had, or cast me out the way Ronnie had?"

When Jersey's mother, Christine, refused to break-up with Clay, the Berry's told her that if she married him she should never come back. But as Jersey comes to know her grandparents better and listens to their side of the story, she realizes that her mother was also partly to blame for what happened because of her stubborn wilfulness. Jersey has to come to the realization that her loving her grandparents will not be a betrayal of her mother.

Having learned from their mistake, instead of judgment, the Berry's now offer Jersey love and support and it is in this environment that she finally starts to work through her grief.

Another interesting aspect of this novel is how our behaviour can shape others whether we realize this or not. The most obvious of course is how Jersey's mom trained her to hate her grandparents without ever meeting them. But Jersey, in reflecting back on her little sister, Marin, comes to realize that she behaved in a similar way. Her sister was fascinated with scorpions but when Jersey scares her, she changes that fascination into fear, forever changing how Marin will look at scorpions.

"I'd taken away her fascination and replaced it with fear. She'd died scared of bugs, because that was how I'd shaped her."

The novel's positive ending with a touch of a blossoming romance only add to the great storyline, the many diverse and well developed characters and the realistic portrayal of living through a tornado.

Jennifer Brown continues her tradition of excellent writing for teens with Torn Away. Highly recommended.

Book Details:
Torn Away by Jennifer Brown
New York: Little Brown and Company 2014
276 pp.

Dark Water Rising by Marian Hale

Dark Water Rising tells the fictional story of a young man and his family's struggle to survive during the Galveston hurricane of 1900, known as the Great Storm or the Galveston Flood.

Sixteen year old Seth Braeden moves with his family to Galveston, the fastest growing city in America in 1900. Seth's Uncle Nate has convinced his father, a master carpenter to move there, offering him a foreman job that would pay enough money to send all his boys to college. Seth however, doesn't want to go to college to study medicine - he wants to work as a carpenter. Although he tells his father this, his wishes are ignored and he is told he is too young to know what he wants.

So Seth along with his parents, his two younger brothers, twelve- year-old Matt and ten-year-old Lucas, and his younger sister, four-year-old Kate, move into a rental home close to the beach on Galveston Island. Seth's Uncle Nate and Aunt Julia have four boys, seventeen-year-old Ben who plans to attend medical school, eleven-year-old Andy and nine-year-old Will as well as ten month-old Elliot. Seth finds it strange to see that his uncle has a hired black man, Ezra and his son Josiah and he's not happy about how his uncle or his dad treat them.

Almost immediately Seth is offered work as a carpenter's helper building rental homes near the beach. His father agrees to let him work provided he can save three quarters of his pay towards college. Since public school doesn't open until October, this gives Seth almost a month of work. Seth begins working for foreman George Farrell and is paired with Henry Covington, another promising, young carpenter. Also working on the construction site are the three Judson brothers, Frank, Charlie and Zachary as well as Josiah. Seth decides to walk home each day with Josiah who is quiet and treats Seth like he is his master, addressing him as "sir". This troubles Seth but he when he mentions this to Josiah, he tells Seth that this is how it must be.

Seth and his family settle in quickly. His days are filled with work as a carpenter's helper and his time off is spent at the beach. At home and at the beach Seth can't help but notice a pretty blond girl next door, whom Ben tells him is Ella Rose Covington. Ella Rose is a sixteen-year-old student at the Ursuline Academy. Ella and Seth meet one day and Seth learns that Henry is Ella's cousin. They decide to meet to go swimming on the Saturday. Unknown to both, their lives will soon change forever.

On Friday evening before quitting time, Ella shows up at the work site to tell Mr. Farrell that the storm flags went up that morning. On Friday evening when Ella and Seth are walking on the beach, Ella remarks how the surf looks strange and different. Neither realizes that they are witnessing the storm surge before a powerful hurricane. On Saturday morning, Seth shows up for work but he is worried; the water in the streets is over his ankles. Soon the streets begin filling with water, the bathhouses and many other beach structure are destroyed by the monster waves. By now Seth knows that this is no ordinary storm and all their lives are in peril. He manages to return home but finds his family gone.

Discussion

Dark Water Rising is a good fictional account of The Great Storm that is heavily based on historical fact. Author Marian Hale used information from survivor accounts, particularly that of Katherine Vedder, who took in neighbours during the hurricane. In Dark Water Rising her family helps the fictional character of Seth and Josiah during the storm but also many others who were real people who experienced the hurricane. Most of the dialogue between the survivors who waited out the storm in her house is real.

Hale effectively portrays the devastation and death afterwards, through the eyes of Seth, who struggles to deal with what he has experienced. After the storm, the devastation is so complete that Seth and Josiah are unable to free those who are trapped in the rubble. Dark Water Rising is a reminder of the terrible force of nature and that powerful storms were likely experienced by both the early settlers to North America as well as by the indigenous peoples of the continent - with much less warning and a lack of understanding of their potential to cause a significant loss of life. This latter aspect is driven home by the descriptions of people simply continuing going about their business in Galveston without really observing what was happening around them. The wooden houses covered with their deadly slate roofs were no match for the hurricane-force winds and the slate and glass became deadly missiles that decapitated and injured.

Hale includes a lengthy Author's Note at the back of the novel that includes pictures and plenty of facts about the storm. What would have been very helpful was the inclusion of a map at the beginning of the novel showing the location of the city and the physical features and neighbourhoods. Hale does state that she "had to map the entire city, block by block, and key it to names and personal accounts" so as to choose a location to portray the devastation resulting from the storm. Overall, Dark Water Rising is a fascinating historical read.

The city of Galveston is built on a low-lying island in the Gulf of Mexico and at the time of the hurricane the highest point of the city was only a little over 8 feet about sea level. The hurricane made landfall on September 8, 1900 and meteorologists reviewing the data available consider that it was a Category 4 storm. The city did receive some warning regarding a tropical storm, but not of this magnitude. They were unprepared and unconcerned. Afterwards, Galveston was in complete ruins and over eight thousand people lost their lives. Many people drowned or were killed by the deadly debris which was blown around. Others survived the storm but could not be freed from the rubble of collapsed buildings. The Galveston storm is still considered the deadliest storm to have hit the United States.

For further information on the 1900 Storm check out The 1900 Storm- Galveston, Texas at https://www.1900storm.com/

The Portal to Texas History  has an online copy of a book, The Great Galveston Disaster by Paul Lester which was published in 1900. It makes for very interesting reading.
Lester, Paul. The great Galveston disaster, containing a full and thrilling account of the most appalling calamity of modern times including vivid descriptions of the hurricane, Book, ca. 1900; digital images, (http://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth26719/ : accessed January 12, 2014), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, http://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries, Denton, Texas.

Book Details:
Dark Water Rising by Marian Hale
New York: Henry Holt and Company    2006
233 pp.

Documentary: Waking The Titanic

Addergoole Parish in North County Mayo, on the west coast of Ireland became known in 1912 for one distinguishing fact besides its crushing poverty; fourteen of its own were involved in the Titanic disaster of April 14th of that year. Known as the Addergoole Fourteen, these young people were aboard Titanic, on her maiden voyage, to the New World, filled with hope for the opportunities of a better life. Only three of them would survive the sinking. For one hundred years, the families of the Addergoole Fourteen never spoke about what happened, about their terrible loss. Waking The Titanic , tells their story.

Lahardane, was a small village in Addergoole, comprised of only 96 souls living in twenty-two houses. The county was extremely poor, with large families often crammed into three room houses. The people of Lahardane led a very harsh life, with the average person dying in their forties or fifties, often from tuberculosis, due to the damp, cold homes.Despite the difficulties, families and communities were very close knit.

Nearly every family had a relative in America. Families often had between six and twelve children and at that time only one child could inherit the land. This meant the other children had to find work, but there were few jobs in Ireland. So these children, once they came of age, emigrated to America, Australia and Europe. Between 1855 and 1912, over four million Irish emigrated - a significant percentage considering the population was only eight million.

In the early 1900's the trans-Atlantic steamer transportation was big business and there was heavy competition between White Star and Cunard. Steerage passengers were the "bread and butter" of the business and steamer lines actively recruited and advertised for steerage passengers in Ireland. The cost of passage to America was expensive though - about seven pounds for steerage. It would usually take about three years to save this amount. Often the money came from those already in America and was known as remittance, that is money to pay for the next generation to go over. It was remittance that got the Addergoole fourteen onto the Titanic.

It was very important for Irish families to get their daughters to America, since there were very few options open to women in Ireland. And likely most women did not want their daughters to lead the hard life they had experienced. America was a land of opportunity. Catherine McGowan, one of the Addergoole Fourteen,  was a perfect example of this. She had come to America twenty-two years earlier and she was now wealthy. Catherine ran a boarding house for newly arrived immigrants. She returned to Addergoole to collect her neice, Annie McGowan to take her back to America. It was Catherine who convinced the other young people from Addergoole that they should all travel together on the same ship.

For the Irish, there developed the tradition of the American wake, which was held for those who left the Emerald Isle for America. Emigrating was like a death because the person leaving would most likely never return. It was a bittersweet time; sad to leave loved ones, but thrilled at the opportunities.

The Titanic was built in Belfast, about 100 miles away from Addergoole. Strangely, Titanic was never christened, nor was she blessed. Perhaps it was because she was considered "unsinkable". This was unusual and added to the superstition that is was unlucky to travel on a ship's maiden voyage. The Irish were very religious and very superstitious. It is claimed some of the Addergoole had premonitions that something terrible was to happen.

On April 10, 1912, the Addergoole Fourteen left home to travel to Queenstown, where Titanic would embark on her first voyage to America. When they boarded Titanic and settled into her third class berths, they were astonished at the incredible luxury. For many, it was the first time they had seen electric lights, used silverware, had a bed to themselves and had proper bathroom facilities. They were among the poorest passengers.

When the Titanic struck the iceberg, the collision went mostly unnoticed. Steerage passengers were told to remain calm and stay where they were. At first they did so, but as the ship began to develop a steep incline, the Addergoole Fourteen knew something was seriously wrong. They were unable to get access to the second class lifeboats and they knew there were not enough boats for everyone on board. Since there was no way to get to the lifeboat deck which was in first class, they climbed three or four decks until they found a ladder leading to the lifeboat deck.

What they found was chaos and soon they became separated from each other. There were only three lifeboats left. In the end, only three of the Addergoole Fourteen survived; Annie Kate Kelly, Delia McDermott, and Annie McGowan, the niece of Catherine McGowan. Of the eleven who perished, only the body of Mary Mangan was recovered. She was buried at sea.

The three survivors were taken to St. Vincent's Hospital in New York where they stayed for two weeks. They were very traumatized and did not speak about the tragedy afterwards. They simply "moved on" and continued with their lives.

This docudrama tells the story of Ireland at the turn of the century, reenacts the tragedy of the sinking of Titanic as it pertains to the Addergoole Fourteen, and interviews historians and the direct descendants of the three survivors. It preserves for posterity, the story of the Addergoole Fourteen. The documentary, directed by Frank Delaney and produced by Gillian Marsh is gripping and emotional.

About ten years ago, the residents of Addergoole decided that they needed to preserve a remembrance of the tragedy for the younger generations that came after, otherwise this piece of their history would be lost forever. One can only imagine the sorrow of the families who lost loved ones and the bittersweet happiness of those whose children survived.

The Killing Sea by Richard Lewis

The Killing Sea is a novel about the 2004 tsunami which killed an estimated 250,000 people.

The story opens on the day before the tsunami, December 25, 2004, with an American family, the Bedford's on vacation in the small harbour town of Meulaboh. They have stopped in the port to have the engine in their small chartered sailboat repaired. Ruslan who lives in Meulaboh, understands English and sends them to his father Yusuf who is a mechanic. Once their sailboat is repaired they sail out of the harbour and anchor for the night off the coast of Sumatra.

Meanwhile, Ruslan, who is a talented artist, cannot forget the deep blue eyes of Sarah Bedford. Ruslan lives with his father in the village. His father, appreciative of Ruslan's artistic gifts, plans to send him to arts college in Jakarta.

Early the next morning a magnitude 9.2 earthquake hits the area, just offshore. Sarah and her family feel the quake as a dull but deep thud. They know immediately that they are in trouble because the reef they are anchored near is drying up, the water receding quickly out to sea. Their sailboat, the Dreamcatcher is trapped, aground and as they look out to the ocean, to their horror they see a wall of water coming towards them. Sarah, her father and mother and younger brother Peter abandon the boat and try to make it to shore to the safety of the hills. It is a race against time they have little chance of winning.

Sarah and her brother Peter survive the tsunami, but Peter has been injured by swallowing water and needs medical attention. Sarah's and Peter's journey becomes one to find help for Peter.

For Ruslan, the quake hits Meulaboh shortly after he finishes breakfast. When he runs to the waterfront to check on his father, he like others in the town, gasp in wonder at the receding water. For reasons, unknown to Ruslan, he begins running away from the ocean as fast as he can. He stops at his home to grab a shirt and sandals and tries to outrun the oncoming black water. But soon he is cut off from every point of escape. His only option is to get to the top of a house and ride out the flood. Ruslan watches in horror as people he knows drown or are crushed in the black refuse-choked waters. He survives but does not know the fate of his father. Eventually Ruslan learns that he went to visit relatives that day in the Calang region. So his journey is to find his missing father.

Discussion

The story is told in the alternating voices of Sarah and Ruslan as they journey first separately and then together towards safety and reuniting with their families. Chapters often end with some kind of tension that is resolved in the next chapter narrated by the character.

Lewis deftly demonstrates to his readers how the physical disaster combined with the political turmoil and Third World character in the Banda Aceh region contribute to the suffering of the people after this catastrophe. Items taken for granted in wealthy Western countries, such as antibiotics, fever medication and even doctors, simply do not exist in poor underdeveloped areas like Aceh.

Lewis incorporated much of what he learned about this tsunami from working as a volunteer in Aceh after the disaster into the novel. He spoke with survivors and refugees and this helped him in the crafting of his story.

Book Details:
The Killing Sea by Richard Lewis
New York: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers 2006
183 pp.

Three Rivers Rising by Jame Richards

Three Rivers Rising is a historical novel written in free verse set against the backdrop of the Johnstown Flood of 1889.

The novel opens in the summer of 1888. Sixteen-year-old Celestia's father Bertram visits South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club on Lake Conemaugh for the possibility of business deals. Her mother Mildred comes for the socials and the gossip. Celestia's sister, nineteen-year-old Estrella is engaged to her beau, Charles who is in Pittsburg learning the family business. But Estrella is enjoying herself, meeting some of the more appealing boys of the clubhouse, like Frederick.

Celestia meets sixteen-year-old Peter who is the hired help. Peter's father works digging up coal for the Cambria Iron Works and he is not keen for Peter to work at the South Fork Club. He tells his son that the rich people's money will not save their dam from breaking but Peter knows everyone laughs off that possibility because the dam always holds. The South Fork Reservoir, called Lake Conemaugh by the wealthy owners, was formed by the placing of a seventy-foot earthen dam across a creek. The lake. which is stocked with fish, is surrounded on one side by "fancy-trim houses" and a large clubhouse. Peter offers to work on the line down in the coal mine after his father tells him that being around the wealthy will give him "ideas". But his father tells Peter it's better he works above ground in the sun and fresh air but he warns his son not "to develop a taste for things" he cannot have.

Johnstown sits where the Stony River and the Little Conemaugh River meet. Above the town the South Fork Creek joins the river, after it fills the reservoir. As a result, Johnstown often floods in the spring due to the rains. The people worry about the dam holding but since it has always held they joke often about it. Celestia encounters Peter who has his fishing pole, as she sits on the banks of the creek reading. They begin meeting day after day, Celestia reading while Peter fishes. One day Celestia gives Peter her book but he reveals that he is able to read as his mother, Anna was a schoolteacher who had travelled much. Their friendship blossoms quickly into a forbidden attraction. Peter continues to meet Celestia in the woods near the clubhouse. Because they are from very different social classes, they have to pretend they do not know one other when their paths cross on the boardwalk. Peter would be quickly dismissed if he was suspected of fraternizing with the wealthy clubhouse patrons and especially with a young girl. 

Celestia is undeterred by Peter's reluctance. Her sister, Estrella suspects something because of Celestia's flushed cheeks and happiness. Celestia reveals to her sister that she is interested in a boy who works at the clubhouse while Estrella seems to have her own love interest. When Peter shows up outside her bedroom window, Estrella tells her where Celestia can find a window to slip outside. This leaves Celestia to wonder just what Estrella has been up to.

However, Celestia's meetings with Peter are discovered by Louise Godwin who sees them swimming in the lake. This upsets Celestia's mother who tells her that being with a "some boy" who is not like them could ruin their position in society. When her father returns from Pittsburg he insists that Celestia stay away from "the hired boy"  and informs her that she will accompany her aunt Mimsy in Europe until she enters finishing school in Switzerland. Celestia tells her father she will not obey him but as she's packing she wonders about her choice. What will she lose by leaving and what will she lose by staying? However, Celestia seems to have made her choice as she gives Peter little keepsakes to remember her by. She is haunted by her choice.

But worse is to come. After packing, and seeing her mother and Aunt Mimsy in turmoil, Celestia learns from Estrella that she has been "ruined" by a man, who now will not marry her. Their father can do nothing to protect her or their family because this man is more powerful. Celestia overhears her parents speaking about what has happened and learns that Estrella is expecting and that the man involved is Grayson. When she learns from Peter that the servants at the clubhouse already know of Estrella's situation, Celestia pretends to have the fever in an effort to prevent the truth from spreading to the other wealthy patrons. This forces the wealthy to flee the clubhouse to avoid what they believe is "the fever".

After spending a year in Switzerland at the Institut Villa Mont Choisi, during which Celestia manages to correspond with Peter, she learns that she is to be married to Andrew Forrester upon returning to the United States. However, Celestia is determined to make her own life and be with Peter. She does not want to marry Andrew whom she doesn't love. Upon arriving at Johnstown, Celestia immediately leaves to find Peter in Johnstown. The spring of 1889 is wet, with the rivers wild with all the recent rain. She finds Peter and his terminally ill father in their rundown home. Her decision to leave the South Fork clubhouse is a fateful one that will set in motion a change of heart amidst the tragedy of Johnstown.

Discussion

Three Rivers Rising is a historical fiction novel about the historic Johnstown flood of 1889 which took the lives of  over two thousand people. 

Johnstown which was founded in 1800 was notable for its steel and iron mill, the Cambria Iron Works and its coal mines which supplied the steel industry, as well as for its railway. The town was situated where the Little Conemaugh and Stoneycreek rivers met. By the 1880's the town had a population of over thirty thousand people. The town was prone to flooding for several reasons: the two rivers were part of an extensive drainage basin of the Allegheny plateau and the rivers had been narrowed by the use of slag (as waste product from the production of steel) to create more land for the town.

Above the town, an earthen dam, the South Fork Dam, had been constructed in the 1830s to the 1850s to supply water to a canal system to transport goods and materials. However with the arrival of the Pennsylvania Railway the canal system fell into disuse. The Railway sold the dam and the reservoir to a private group with the reservoir being converted into a resort lake for use by the wealthy.  The earthen dam was lowered by three feet and the culverts in the dam used to manage the reservoir water were removed. This meant there was no way to lower the water level in the reservoir, now called Lake Conemaugh during periods of heavy rain. A club house for the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club was built and many wealthy industrialists including Andrew Carnegie frequented the resort.

Several days of heavy rainfall filled Lake Conemaugh to the point that it was almost cresting the top of the lowered earthen dam. Elias Unger, President of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club and who was in a farmhouse adjacent to the dam, saw that situation at the dam was dangerous. Unger and his men were unsuccessful in dealing with the rising water and word was sent by telegraph warning Johnstown of the situation. Meanwhile in Johnstown, the torrential rain had flooded the town with water rising to almost ten feet in the streets.

The South Fork Dam breached sometime around 2:50PM, a wall of water racing first to the town of South Fork where most were able to scramble up the hills to safety. As the floodwaters raced the fourteen miles downstream towards Johnstown, it picked up debris including parts of houses, trees and animals. The flood gained strength after slamming into and destroying the Conemaugh Viaduct, stripping the soil down to the bedrock at the town of Mineral Point. The floodwaters reached Johnstown fifty-seven minutes after the dam breach, sweeping over two thousand two hundred people to their deaths.

The novel begins with the narratives of two young people from very different social classes: Peter whose father works in the local coal mine and who works at the clubhouse, and wealthy Celestia Whitcomb who, along with her parents and older sister, is a guest at the clubhouse. Gradually the narrative expands to include seventeen-year-old Maura, wife of Joseph who conducts the one of the many trains that run on the Pennsylvania Railway line through the Johnstown area. Maura is mother to three young children and is expecting another baby. There is also Kate, a widow whose husband Early drowned shortly after their marriage. Kate went by the name of Kitty, but as she struggles to deal with her loss, becomes a nurse who happens to be near Johnstown when the disaster happens. Bertram Whitcomb, Celestia's father is also included in the last half of the novel, and it is his narrative that offers descriptions of the massive destruction by the floodwaters.

The novel employs the forbidden love trope of a wealthy girl/boy falling for the poor boy/girl from the wrong social class.  Celeste's father is a wealthy businessman while Peter's father is a coal miner. In late 19th century society, such a match would be forbidden. The social repercussions would be so great that it's unlikely either would follow through on their feelings. Once Celestia's relationship with Peter is discovered her mother tells her,
"Your actions could not only tear us

from our place in society

but rip this family apart,

person from person."

The novel highlights the stigma and double standard placed on women in society especially during the Victorian era. Celestia's older sister Estrella has become involved with a man, named Grayson a wealthy industrialist with a reputation for "ruining" women. She is now pregnant and unmarried - that is, "ruined". To save their family and her father's business, Estrella must be shunned by her family and quietly and quickly sent away. Aunt Mimsy tells Celestia,
"And if she is properly disowned...?'

Damage to the family is... tolerable.'

Mimsy grimaces. 'But Estrella will be lost to us forever.

The limb will be sacrificed

to save the tree, you see.'

It is Estrella who must bear the consequences while the man is allowed to continue his predatory ways. Estrella is forced to leave her family under the pretence of some excuse - a vacation or illness, never to return, her name never mentioned, her existence blotted out. 

When Celestia makes the choice to leave her family and be with Peter, her father disowns her as well, even though she has done nothing dishonorable except to love someone from another social class. Upon discovering that Celestia has left, Whitcomb removes her picture from the double frame that once also held Estrella's portrait, rips it up and prepares to leave the clubhouse. But the breaching of the dam and the resulting tragedy changes Celestia's father. During his frantic search for her, as he helped parents try to find the bodies of their childrren, Whitcomb's perspective on his daughter's situation changes. After discovering Celestia ill with typhoid and being cared for by Peter,he tells him,

" 'What would any of those parents give

to have their child back?

Would they trade obedience?

Money?

Power?

The good opinion of friends?...

So much senseless loss...

how could anyone

choose

to lose someone he loves?' "

The novel ends happily with Celestia recovering at the family home in Pittsburg, Peter at her side, and the recovery of Estrella who their Aunt Mimsy has managed to secure a good marriage, along with her new husband and her baby. Celestia's parents are much changed, her mother working to help the survivors and no longer consumed by their status in society, and her father open to having his daughters at home.

While Three Rivers Rising does capture the essence of the Johnstown flood, according to the author it is not a book about the flood disaster. It is a story set against the backdrop of the catastrophe, incorporating a few characters and events that really did happen. The novel's main source of tension is whether or not Peter and Celestia will survive the flood and what happens afterwards if they do.

The endnotes of the novel contain a chronology on the South Fork Dam and provide readers with selection of fiction and nonfiction books on the Johnstown Flood.

Book Details:

Three Rivers Rising by Jame Richards
New York: Alfred A. Knopf      2010
293 pp.