A World Turned Over : A Killer Tornado and the Lives It Changed Forever
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Product Description
At 4:33 P.M. on March 3, 1966, the skies above Jackson, Mississippi, turned an ominous yellow before going suddenly and violently black. A tornado of the F-5 category -- the most lethal -- struck without warning. It tore roofs off buildings, twisted metal, blew out windows, threw cars into the air, and killed fourteen people -- thirteen of them in a newly built shopping mall, the Candlestick Shopping Center. The fury and destruction ended in seconds, but in those moments the tornado had ripped through the heart of a community, changing lives forever. In A World Turned Over, Lorian Hemingway returns to the Jackson she knew as a child and tells the story of the Candlestick Tornado, as it came to be known. Vividly re-creating the terrifying day of the tornado, she recounts the miracles and tragedies that also happened that day -- including the story of Donna Durr, who with her baby was lifted in her car seventy-five feet up into the vortex, and of eighteen-year-old Ronny Hannis, who survived to help rescue others, oblivious to the danger to his own life. Decades later, the devastation of that single day continues to reverberate and affect those left behind. Lyrical and haunting, A World Turned Over is an unforgettable story of awesome destruction -- and a powerful testament to the extraordinary resilience, faith, and heroism of ordinary people visited by fate.
Spotlight Customer Reviews:
Summary:
Could've been a better, shorter book
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Comment:
The story of the Candlestick tornado and the people who died as a result of it is sad and shocking, and compelled me to keep reading, but I often found myself skimming through parts of this book. Why? Because the author kept repeating the same information and ideas. The book would have been much more readable and would have had a stronger impact if the repetitive passages had been edited out.
If you have a strong interest in learning more about the sad events and loss of life at Candlestick, you may want to read this book. Be prepared, however, to wade through a lot of excess prose.
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Summary:
genetic legacy no guarantee of inherited talent
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Comment:
I'm afraid I agree with Mr. Rubendall. As a weather afficianado I began WORLD TURNED OVER with enthusiasm, but Ms. Hemingway's self-important florid prose and sticky nostalgia eclipsed the real tragedy that cost many of her chlidhood acquaintances their lives. In dwelling overly long on her own recollections and, one suspects, in trying to ape the style of her famous grandfather (a lack of contractions doesn't make writing more profound, just more pompous!), Ms. Hemingway actually does the Candlestick tornado, its victims, and its survivors, a disservice. The book would have been much better off written in the analytical style and format of, for instance, Sebastian Junger's PERFECT STORM, or Erik Larson's ISAAC'S STORM; more journalistic integrity and less faux lyricism would have benefitted Candlestick's survivors and victims and made this a much more engaging read. If you're fascinated with weather, you'd be better off with the above books--or nonfiction accounts provided by tornado survivors--or just watching the Weather Channel's Storm Story account of the Candlestick tornado. My apologies to the author, but WORLD TURNED OVER was a real disappointment.
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Summary:
A piece of history for a fellow Jacksonian
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Comment:
I discovered this book through a mention of it in the New York Times Book Review. It caught my eye because I grew up in Jackson, MS. I had heard about the Candlestick Tornado many times in childhood, but knew little about the details. I really enjoyed Ms. Hemingway's ability to evoke the Jackson environment. We also ran behind the fog machine as children, although I lived in North Jackson and there we called it "the mosquito man." Ms. Hemingway writes lyrically, and her descriptions of the people and families affected by the tornado are quite affecting. I had tears in my eyes several times. The only reason I gave the book 4 stars instead of 5 is because the book is a little repetitive, and because I wish she would have told us a little more about the aftermath, how the shopping center owner was able to afford to rebuild his building. A few facts and figures would have added to the book for me. Although I live in the North now, I can say that fellow Southerners will recognize immediately how well Ms. Hemingway describes Southern culture, both then and now. Northerners may learn a thing or two about Southerners by reading this book.
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Summary:
lushly written
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Comment:
Lorian Hemingway's "A World Turned Over" is beautifully, lushly written. In a dreamer's evocative prose, she tells the story of the severe tornado that struck Jackson, Mississippi, in the spring of 1966, destroying the Candlestick Shopping Center. Hemingway, a girl of 10 at the time, had moved away shortly before the storm came. More than thirty years later, she returned to there to claim her own memories, and to record the recollections of people whose lives had been forever changed, some by the loss of a family member, some by witnessing sites that burned upon their souls. When they see the sky taking on that peculiar yellow tinge, when they hear the sirens, their bodies respond with pounding hearts, shallow breathing, goosebumps. They react not only to the sight and sounds, but to their own memories. Suffused with that sense of place which other southern writers also express so well, with the scents, sounds, sights of that region called "home", Hemingway's book will transport you to the Jackson she knew as a child, and to that March afternoon when the familiar world was turned upside down. This book deserves a wide readership! Highly recommended!
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Summary:
More childhood memoir than disaster book
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Comment:
This book seems out of place in the "disaster book" genre. The author seems more concerned with reliving her childhood. Not a very good read.
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