Flooded

The dark truth behind the Johnstown Flood of 1889 -- one of the greatest calamities our country has ever experienced--is revealedin a beautiful, harrowing story, told in luminous verse.Before the flood, Johnstown, Pennsylvania, was a working class industry town filled with immigrants, factory workers, shopowners, housewives, and schoolchildren, all with hopes and dreams for the future. Sixteen-year-old Joe Dixon opens a newsstandand aspires to make a name for himself like Andrew Carnegie; Monica Fagan longs to travel to her mother's native Ireland, whileher younger brother Daniel just wants to hike the mountain and enjoy clean air; George Hoffman yearns for a job so he can relievehis family's burdens; William James works hard to be a poet; and little Gertrude Quinn is happy to collect treasures from herfather's store.Above the soot-filled town, an elite hunting and fishing club built on a manmade lake draws America's wealthiest business barons-- Carnegie, Mellon, and Frick. Though repeatedly warned, they ignore the pleas to fix the deteriorating dam that holds the lake.And when heavy rains come, the dam bursts, and Johnstown is decimated. As great as the tragedy was the injustice: The clubmembers eschewed any blame and claimed the flood was a natural disaster.Told in alternating voices -- some inspired by first-person accounts -- the chorus of these six children turns an unspeakablecatastrophe into a transcendent and hopeful work of art in the tradition of such classics as Edgar Lee Master's Spoon RiverAnthology and Thornton Wilder's Our Town.