What Stands in a Storm

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By Kim Cross & Rick Bragg

Publisher Description

Enter the eye of the storm in this gripping real-life thriller—A Perfect Storm on land—that chronicles America’s biggest tornado outbreak since the beginning of recorded weather: a horrific three-day superstorm with 358 separate tornadoes touching down in twenty-one states and destroying entire towns.

April 27, 2011 was the climax of a three-day superstorm that unleashed terror from Arkansas to New York. Entire communities were flattened, whole neighborhoods erased. Tornadoes left scars across the land so wide they could be seen from space. But from terrible destruction emerged everyday heroes—neighbors and strangers who rescued each other from hell on earth.

“Armchair storm chasers will find much to savor in this grippingly detailed, real-time chronicle of nature gone awry” (Kirkus Reviews) set in Alabama, the heart of Dixie Alley where there are more tornado fatalities than anywhere else in the US. With powerful emotion and captivating detail, journalist Kim Cross expertly weaves together science and heartrending human stories. For some, it’s a story of survival; for others it’s the story of their last hours.

Cross’s immersive reporting and dramatic storytelling catapult you to the center of the very worst hit areas, where thousands of ordinary people witnessed the sky falling around them. Yet from the disaster rises a redemptive message that’s just as real: in times of trouble, the things that tear our world apart reveal what holds us together.

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What Stands in a Storm Reviews

4.0

Kayla May

Created about 1 month ago

klex

Created about 1 month ago

Whitney Garrett

Created about 2 months ago

“This was a very beautifully written account of the 2011 tornado that devastated Tuscaloosa, AL. At once fascinating and heart wrenching, it captures all the beauty and terror of tornadoes. Cross also covers how tornadoes work and what meteorologists and storm chasers do to warn civilians to save as many lives as possible from these devastating storms. My only qualm with the book is that the beginning bounces back and forth between the time just before the storm, explanations of tornado science, and what led the main cast to be where they were that day. During this section I was struggling to remember who was who, but once the tornado touched down it mostly followed the timeline linearly and everything became a lot more clear. Below are some notable quotes from the book. The last two are pretty intense, fair warning. “In an age when we can map the human genome, gather dust from a comet hurtling through space, and engineer synthetic DNA, science cannot predict exactly when and where a tornado will form.” “The water tower, a mile or two up the road in the town of Holt, should be hidden by a wall of green. But the trees that had blocked it were somewhere else. All those trees, gone. It was dizzying, this feeling of too much sky, like diving one hundred feet underwater and looking up for the first time into the weight of all that blue.” “The burning question in everyone’s heart was Why? ‘You’ve got the wrong question,’ [James Spann] said. ‘It’s not Why? because you will never get an answer at this time and place. It’s What? What can we learn from this? How should we respond? What can we do to take this and turn it into something positive? It’s biblical, when something good comes out of bad things.’” “Among the last and most precious things she found was a whiteboard. On it was a Bible verse in Danielle’s hand, written in purple dry-erase marker. Every letter remained intact, and when she found it, Michelle believed Danielle had left it for her to find: ‘We are hard-pressed on every side, but not crushed, perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down but not destroyed. -2 Corinthians 4:8’” “They did it because food is love. Because they knew that dragging branches and lifting boards could not be done on an empty stomach. In the South, food and tragedy are sisters.” “But the same forces that destroy the walls that protect us also bring down the walls that divide us. And when everything else is stripped away, what stands is a truth as old as time: The things that tear our world apart reveal what holds us together.” “[The tornado] sucked people into a hateful sky and pelted them to death with shards of the places they trusted to protect them.” “‘He’s gone, Beverly moaned. ‘He’s gone.’ She could not see him on the other side of the wall. She did not have to. Her arm was still wrapped around his neck, and she had felt him grow cold in her hand.””

Sarah Piraino

Created 2 months ago

About Kim Cross

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.