The best kind of non-fiction writing

books:

	• The White Cascade: The Great Northern Railway Disaster and America's Deadliest Avalanche Gary Krist Henry Holt and Co., 2007 - 336 pages average customer review:based on 26 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Great Historical Book

This has to be one of my favorite books I have read. At first I was woried that it would just be a story but it has all the historical facts in a style that makes it exciting to read.

The best kind of non-fiction writing

This book is the best kind of non-fiction. The historical rigor doesn't get in the way of the narrative flow of the story, but the narrative flow doesn't water down the historical rigor, either. I think the main reason for this is that the author is primarily a novelist; this is his first non-fiction book.

As he unfolds the story, it becomes an edge-of-your-seat tale of suspense. You can almost hear ominous soundtrack music welling up in the background as the snow falls and falls and falls, the railroad workers make nearly superhuman attempts to clear the tracks so the stranded trains can get off of the mountain, and the passengers sit at the base of a thousand-foot high mountain with millions of tons of unstable snow above them.

While he's telling the human stories, he also explains the background of mountain pass railroading, the economics of the industry, and the technological limitations the equipment of the day created. At the end of the book, he explains the legal issues that arose as a result of the disaster. Most important, he makes it clear that nearly everyone involved made the decisions he made for the best of reasons, even though some of those decisions turned out to be disastrously wrong.

Though the Wellington avalanche is the worst such disaster in US history-- and one of the worst train disasters, too-- in the hundred years that have passed, it has faded into oblivion. The site of the disaster has, too, having been abandoned by the railroad since 1929.

On the one hand, that's just the way it goes; new events push old events into the past. On the other hand, that's a real shame. There are lessons in the Wellington avalanche about corporate responsibility, technological hubris, and government oversight that we might well benefit from.

This book is nearly perfect non-fiction. It's a fast, entertaining read that also teaches the readers important lessons. I recommend it most highly.

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History that reads like fiction

This is a wonderful book about the train disaster of 1910 where The White Cascade was swept off the mountain by a massive avalanche. Generally I am not into "disaster books" but this one caught my eye because I had been hiking in the former Wellington area of Stevens Pass the summer before. I knew the "end of the story" but wanted to learn more.

I expected to learn something about the regional history and of the railroad in particular (and was not disappointed, but was most surprised by how much life Krist brought to the story. His background information and detail on passengers and workers created the kind of empathy and suspense that I would normally associate with a book of fiction. It is obvious that his research was extensive and that he took the time to learn a different side of people than what we normally see in books of history. The end result is a real page-turner and I found myself staying up all night to finish the book, even though I already knew what happened. I guess in this way the book is like a train ride where the excitement is in journey. I could not recommend this book more.

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Chilling story

Very good retelling of the 1913 avalanche, with nearly 100 killed the worst in US history, involving social, technical, and political crosscurrents which Krist turns into a compelling and inexorably chilling story.

Excellent read

Very enjoyable, well documented book. I also enjoyed the early history of railroading and Washington state.

Coleen from Kent, Wa

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

The never-before-told story of one of the worst rail disasters in U.S. history in which two trains full of people, trapped high in the Cascade Mountains, are hit by a devastating avalanche
In February 1910, a monstrous blizzard centered on Washington State hit the Northwest, breaking records. The world stopped?but nowhere was the danger more terrifying than near a tiny town called Wellington, perched high in the Cascade Mountains, where a desperate situation evolved minute by minute: two trainloads of cold, hungry passengers and their crews found themselves marooned without escape, their railcars gradually being buried in the rising drifts. For days, an army of the Great Northern Railroad?s most dedicated men?led by the line?s legendarily courageous superintendent, James O?Neill?worked round-the-clock to rescue the trains. But the storm was unrelenting, and to the passenger?s great anxiety, the railcars?their only shelter?were parked precariously on the edge of a steep ravine. As the days passed, food and coal supplies dwindled. Panic and rage set in as snow accumulated deeper and deeper on the cliffs overhanging the trains. Finally, just when escape seemed possible, the unthinkable occurred: the earth shifted and a colossal avalanche tumbled from the high pinnacles, sweeping the trains and their sleeping passengers over the steep slope and down the mountainside.
Centered on the astonishing spectacle of our nation?s deadliest avalanche, The White Cascade is the masterfully told story of a supremely dramatic and never-before-documented American tragedy. An adventure saga filled with colorful and engaging history, this is epic narrative storytelling at its finest.

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