Book Reviews: The Children's Blizzard; Make Your Move
The Children’s Blizzard by Melanie Benjamin (Dell, 2021)
Melanie Benjamin is best known for historical novels that vividly recreate the lives of famous figures—Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Truman Capote, Mary Pickford, and so on. So her new book is a departure, taking us out to the Great Plains in 1888, among the newly settled immigrants and the hucksters who lured them there with empty promises of prosperity. There aren’t any celebrities in this one; in fact, most of the characters here are fictional, though many are based on real people.
This book centers not on a real person but on a real event, a massive storm that blew out of nowhere at the worst possible time—just as schools were letting out for the day—and claimed hundreds of lives, many of them children’s lives.
Fictional though they are, Benjamin’s characters imprint themselves on the mind nonetheless: the overworked little hired girl, the cynical ex-newspaperman, the bar owner worried about his kids, the two young teachers working in schools many miles apart. In some ways, these two teachers, teenaged sisters Raina and Gerda Olsen, are at the heart of the story. As the storm approaches, each has to make a quick decision that will play out in ways she can’t foresee, a decision with permanent consequences for the children in her care. Seeing this heavy responsibility on the shoulders of such young girls, you’ll never again think quite so nonchalantly about Laura Ingalls Wilder or Anne of Green Gables becoming teachers at 15 or 16 or whatever it was. As I recall, Anne faced a similar situation and decision in the second book of that series, but in that case things worked out and everyone (well, every human, anyway) survived.
In this book . . . not so much.
The fact is, The Children’s Blizzard is bleak. Extremely bleak. I guess it wouldn’t be possible to write a book about a huge killer storm and not have it be bleak. This book isn’t just an action novel; there are thoughtful and deep character studies here. But some of those are just about as bleak as the descriptions of people getting lost in the blinding snow and freezing to death. What Benjamin does particularly well is show how a person’s whole history and character and desires all go into that one split-second decision that could make the difference between life and death. And how the aftermath of such a decision can change a person forever.
Let’s face it, reading about Mary Pickford was a lot more fun, even after she retired from acting and went all Miss Havisham. Still, The Children’s Blizzard is a riveting read. Grim, but riveting.
Make Your Move: The New Science of Dating and Why Women Are in Charge by Jon Birger (BenBella Books, 2021).
And now for something completely different!
I got to know Jon Birger a bit after he published his 2015 book Date-Onomics: How Dating Became a Lopsided Numbers Game and I published my 2017 book One by One: Welcoming the Singles in Your Church. We had a couple of good talks about what we discovered through the research and writing process, and the dating scene in general. His approach to the subject is more secular, and mine more faith-based, but he wanted to learn more about dating trends among various religious groups, so he was interested in some of the experiences and observations I was able to share. And he was kind enough to send me an Advance Review Copy of his new book.
Jon is a creative thinker about the dating scene (and goodness knows it could use a few creative thinkers). He’s genuinely interested in helping people end up in happy relationships. And he backs up his creativity and helpfulness with solid research. In Date-Onomics, he made a strong case—without oversimplifying—that many of the difficulties women face in dating can be traced back to demographics: fewer men than women. In Make Your Move, he argues for women taking the initiative in dating. Again, he uses both “science and storytelling,” as he puts it, drawing from studies and history and anecdotes to show that our traditions in this area aren’t always based on reality, that in fact the situation improves for everybody when women make the first move.
In addition to creativity, I appreciate Jon’s ability to write seriously and frankly about the problems women face in dating, without talking down to us or judging us or assuming all the problems are our fault. (If you knew how rare that is . . . !) As I mentioned, he and I come at the topic from different perspectives, so I don’t see eye to eye with him on everything—he allows for things like open marriages that my faith tradition doesn’t allow for—but I still find his writings intriguing, useful, and great at helping me think about some of these issues in new ways. I can’t help wishing those writings had been available years ago; I don’t know if I would have been brave enough to go around asking guys out in my twenties, but I might have been inspired to at least try!
Book Links
The Children’s Blizzard at Amazon
The Children’s Blizzard at Bookshop
Make Your Move at Amazon
Make Your Move at Bookshop
Other Links
A very happy 209th birthday to Charles Dickens! In his honor, here’s a reminder that I have both a blog and a book dedicated to him—I hope you’ll check them out! A couple of online reviewers have remarked that reading The Gospel in Dickens has made them eager to read more of his works, which makes me so happy. As far as I’m concerned, one can never have too much Dickens.