WHAT STANDS IN A STORM:
A True Story of Love and Resilience
in the Worst Superstorm in History
A True Story of Love and Resilience
in the Worst Superstorm in History
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 349 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 Texas 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.
REVIEWS
“Turn off your cellphone. Call in sick. Tell your family whatever you need to tell them, because you’re going to have to have eight hours of uninterrupted time once you begin Kim Cross’s book. Her verbs pulsate, her narrative web sucks you in. Mostly, Cross makes you care about the people in What Stands in a Storm, their quirks and aspirations. You won’t look at a coiling sky the same way after reading this powerhouse debut.” —Beth Macy, New York Times-bestselling author of Factory Man
“The writerly brilliance—the terse dark poetry—of this debut book explodes from every page. Yet Kim Cross is too much of a writer to let mere masterful writing suffice. She has enlisted her sentences in the service of her tremendous reportorial mission: to recover and make sense of the thousands of fragmentary incidents, images, voices, and glimpses of human character ennobled by loss and imminent death—the sum and substance of the most catastrophic mass-tornado attack in recorded American history. This young writer has done the impossible: she has out-written apocalypse. A new star has appeared in our literary sky.” —Ron Powers, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and co-author of Flags of Our Fathers
"Gripping chronicle...Detail-oriented reporting anchors a novelist's flair for drama. Horrifying depictions of the monster storms...make other accounts...tame by comparison." —Publishers Weekly, starred review
"A splendid reporter, and even better writer, Kim Cross has taken a catastrophic 'act of God' that seemed to beggar description as well as explanation and rendered it as shimmering molecules of feeling and meaning. An outstanding debut." —Diane McWhorter, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Carry Me Home
"Painstakingly reported and told through a voice of hope, Kim’s literary debut honors the Southern tradition of storytelling and presents her as a new voice for the South." —Southern Living, 50 People Who Are Changing the South in 2015
“Armchair storm chasers will find much to savor in this grippingly detailed, real-time chronicle of nature gone awry.”—Kirkus Reviews
“Cross takes us up close to a force of nature with a poetic, soul-searing narrative that keeps you turning page after page.”
—Charlayne Hunter-Gault, Emmy- and Peabody-Award winning journalist and author of To the Mountaintop
"Whether you live in tornado country of not, everyone should read this book!" —Fannie Flagg, author of Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistlestop Cafe
Signed first-edition hardcovers (sold out elsewhere) can be purchased from Alabama Booksmith, one of my favorite local booksellers, in Birmingham, Alabama.
If you’d like a signed paperback, you can call my now-local book shop, Rediscovered Books, in Boise, Idaho.
Paperbacks, ebooks, and audiobooks are available at Bookshop, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Books-A-Million.