The Children's Blizzard

November 1, 2020
The brutal storm that whirled up suddenly on an enchantingly mild and sunny day in January 1888 just as schools let out became known as the Children's Blizzard for all the young lives it claimed. Best-selling historical novelist Benjamin (Mistress of the Ritz, 2019), whose previous novels focus on prominent women, astutely defines this disaster by imagining those who were killed or forever changed by it. Sisters Raina and Gerda, whose immigrant parents were lured to inhospitable Nebraska by promises of a veritable Garden of Eden, serve as teachers in one-room schoolhouses while they're still in their teens. Raina becomes entangled in the woes of the family she boards with, as does little Anette, who is sold as a servant by her cruel and desperate mother. The combustible claustrophobia of this unhappy household is matched by the ferocity of the blizzard in heart-in-throat scenes of Raina and Gerda's valiant struggles to survive. Equally compelling is the story of newspaperman Gavin, reduced to writing, at the direction of the railroads, the fake news that delivered duped Northern European immigrants to the forbidding plains. In this piercingly detailed drama, riveting in its action and psychology, Benjamin reveals the grim aspects of homesteading, from brutal deprivations to violent racism toward Native Americans and African Americans, while orchestrating, with grace and resonance, transformative moral awakenings and sustaining love.

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November 30, 2020
Benjamin (Mistress of the Ritz) revisits the Children’s Blizzard that killed 235 people in January 1888 in this sprawling, well-told story. As the children from two Great Plains schools prepare to leave at the end of an unusually mild winter day, Benjamin focuses on the different choices made by their teachers—first-generation Norwegian American sisters Gerda and Raina Olsen, a three-day ride apart from each other across the Nebraska-Dakota border —while the storm approaches with dark clouds and strong winds. Gerda, teaching in Dakota Territory, rashly dismisses her students so she can see her would-be beau, while Raina, in Nebraska, chooses to keep her small class together. Meanwhile, jaded newspaperman Gavin Woodson is torn between opportunism—he knows he’s found a great story that can punch his ticket back to N.Y.C.—and romanticism, as Gavin, and his readers, grow entranced by the stories of the blizzard’s unlikely heroes and heroines, such as one of Raina’s students who tries to save his classmate. The narrative revolves largely around northern European settlers to the region, and the attempts to incorporate the experiences of Sioux people feel somewhat forced. Nevertheless, there’s great suspense inherent to the events. Benjamin achieves a balance of grand drama and devastatingly intimate moments.