The Children's Blizzard by Melanie Benjamin

"It was the right thing to do, she decided; they were already bundled up and ready to go home ... There would be no teaching her disappointed pupils if she changed her mind and kept them all inside.  And there would be no pretending with Tiny, in the snug little farmhouse cooking him the meal she'd planned ... No kisses designed to lasso her cowpoke. 

"Go home," Gerda called gaily over the whine of the wind causing some of the students to halt in confusion ... Homestead children understood weather.  Shelter in place -- wasn't that what they were taught to do in a blizzard?  But they were also taught to always obey teacher" 

The above passage is from The Children's Blizzard by Melanie Benjamin (2021) recommended by my friend Iris and thank you Iris for letting me know about this gripping and very moving historical novel with characters I will not forget any time soon.  

The Children's Blizzard tells the story of a real event, a terrible blizzard, that struck the Great Plains on January 12, 1888.  By the time it was over 235 people had died and many of the dead were children.  No one saw this tragedy coming because the day had started out so well.  The weather had been bad in the week leading up to the blizzard but then on the morning of Jan 12th it was unseasonably warm and the children went off to school miles away dressed in relatively light clothing.  But then suddenly around noon the sky darkened and shortly after a monstrous blizzard descended on the plains states.  Winds so strong they blew out windows and shattered buildings, temperatures plunging to sub zero and snow and sleet so bad that it was impossible for people to see a few feet in front of them if they were unlucky enough to be caught outside.  

And so Melanie Benjamin uses this backdrop to tell a powerful story (based loosely on real life characters) of two sisters Raina and Gerda Olsen. They are also school teachers and very young.  Raina is 15 and teaching in Nebraska and Gerda is 18 and teaching in South Dakota.  These two sisters are isolated in their one-room school houses with their young students when the blizzard hits.  Raina decides to keep her students together, sheltering in place.  Gerda cares about her children but also decides that the weather isn't that bad and so sends them home early when the sky starts darkening.  

The second half of the Children's Blizzard deals with the aftermath of the storm and the different choices Raina and Gerda made.  There are other interesting characters in the novel.  Raina for example is boarding with the Pedersen family while she teaches school and the father of the household, Gunner Pedersen, is a piece of work, seducing 15 year old Raina.  Also living with the Pedersens is one of Raina's students, Annette.  Her mother sold her to the Pedersen family and Anna Pedersen, Gunner's wife, takes her frustrations out on little Annette treating her like a servant.

And in a separate storyline that later will link up with the other characters in the novel we have the newspaperman Gavin Woodson who writes for the Omaha Daily Bee.  He hates it.  He had a great job in New York working for The World but due to an argument with the owner, Joseph Pulitzer, he was let go and is now stuck out in the middle of nowhere as he sees it.  Woodson longs to be back in New York and he feels guilt as well because his articles for The Bee are not real reporting.  The advertisers demand he write articles that sugarcoat what life on the prairie is like so as to attract immigrant families and families back east and urge them to sell their belongings and head west.  Gavin Woodson feels guilt about this and so when the blizzard hits he knows he has the story of his career but also a chance at redemption.

Guilt and the search for redemption factor big in this book and ultimately this is a story about two sisters, the dreams they had planned and the journey they saw their lives taking until that fateful day.  I heartily recommend The Children's Blizzard.