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Three Days in the Worst Superstorm to Hit the South's Tornado Alley
by Kim Cross
Immersive reporting and dramatic storytelling set you right in the middle of the horrific superstorm of April 2011, a weather event that killed 348 people.
April 27, 2011, marked the climax of a superstorm that saw a record 358 tornadoes rip through twenty-one states in three days, seven hours, and eighteen minutes. It was the deadliest day of the biggest tornado outbreak in recorded history, which saw 348 people killed, entire neighborhoods erased, and $11 billion in damage. The biggest of the tornadoes left scars across the land so wide they could be seen from space. But from the terrible destruction emerged everyday heroes, neighbors and strangers who rescued each other from hell on earth.
With powerful emotion and gripping detail, Cross weaves together the heart-wrenching stories of several characters - including three college students, a celebrity weatherman, and a team of hard-hit rescuers - to create a nail-biting chronicle in the Tornado Alley of America. No, it's not Oklahoma or Kansas; it's Alabama, where there are more tornado fatalities than anywhere in the US, where the trees and hills obscure the storms until they're bearing down upon you. For some, it's a story of survival, and for others it's the story of their last hours.
Cross's immersive reporting and dramatic storytelling sets you right in the middle of the very worst hit areas of Alabama, where thousands of ordinary people witnessed the sky falling around them. Yet from the disaster comes a redemptive message that's just as real: In times of trouble, the things that tear our world apart also reveal what holds us together.
"Starred Review. Horrifying depictions of the monster storms and gut-wrenching scenes of loss make other accounts of Tuscaloosa's tragic tornados ... seem tame by comparison." - Publishers Weekly
"Armchair storm chasers will find much to savor in this grippingly detailed, real-time chronicle of nature gone awry." - Kirkus
"Kim Cross goes behind the newsreels and shows us the devastating impact that one group of superstorms had on the people of Alabama in April of 2011 and what happened long after the newsreels stopped and moved on to cover another story. Heartbreaking and heroic." - Fannie Flagg, author of Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistlestop Cafe
"What Stands in a Storm is a dramatic and carefully reconstructed account of nature's unexpected and explosive power and the strength of humans to bond together in its destructive wake." - Peter Stark, author of Astoria and The Last Empty Places
"A powerful book, unforgettable in its recreation of a horror that swallowed entire communities." - Winston Groom, author of Forrest Gump
This information about What Stands in a Storm was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Kim Cross is an editor-at-large for Southern Living and a feature writer who has received awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, the Society of American Travel Writers, and the Media Industry Newsletter. Her writing has appeared in Outside, Cooking Light, Bicycling, Runner's World, The Tampa Bay Times, The Birmingham News, The Anniston Star, USA TODAY, The New Orleans Times-Picayune, and CNN.com. She lives in Alabama.
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