In the path of the storm
During the Hurricane of 1938, winds gusted at 189 miles an hour at the Blue Hill Observatory in Milton, about 100 miles east of the storm track. The force of the tempest registered on the seismograph at Fordham University in the Bronx as if it were a major earthquake.
Though the damage to forests in Vermont and New Hampshire was unprecedented, most of the 600 fatalities were due to the storm surge, which mainly affected Long Island, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. Vermont resident Stephen Long, whose career has focused on writing about the region’s forests and people, puts the numbers in context in “Thirty-Eight: The Hurricane that Transformed New England” (Yale University).
Even if the environmental impact of the hurricane doesn’t interest you, the first-person accounts make fascinating reading. Fred Hunt was 14 and walking down a road in Rindge, N.H., just before the hurricane swept in. The wind became so loud he didn’t hear a white pine tree, two feet in diameter, crash 15 feet behind him. He ended up taking refuge under it. When the storm passed, he crawled out and saw that every other tree in the forest had come down. “Once I could see there wasn’t much of anything to blow down, why, then I crawled my way through it for the rest of the way home,” he said.
Jim Colby, who was then 18, told Long, “The wind began to pick up gradually. When we got home the wind was blowing hard, but nobody could comprehend it was going to blow harder.” The Boscawen, N.H., resident continued: “And then all at once the skies opened up and the wind came and all the trees in our dooryard went down . . . Unless you were there and saw it, you just can’t comprehend it.”
Even though hurricanes have reached the interior of New England only three times in the past five centuries —1635, 1815, and 1938 — meteorologists and ecologists view such hurricanes as normal but rare. Advances in technology might mean we get more notice of an advancing hurricane than people did in 1938 but our advanced technology won’t save us from such a storm’s deadly power. In the aftermath of a hurricane, how will you learn what has happened beyond your neighborhood? Long’s advice is simple: Keep a battery-powered radio on hand.
ICA Reads Ward’s memoir
The Institute of Contemporary Art has selected Jesmyn Ward’s memoir “Men We Reaped” (Bloomsbury) for its latest installment of ICA Reads, an annual suite of events organized around a book and highlighting works on view. “Men We Reaped” explores issues of race and masculinity through the death of Ward’s brother and four other young black men in rural Mississippi where the author grew up.
She will be in conversation with Boston-based artist and educator Steve Locke whose work focuses on notions of masculinity at 3 p.m. April 10. Free. Tickets will be available two hours before the talk.
Emily Alyssa Owens, who is writing a cultural history of sex and slavery, will co-lead an art and book discussion at 11 a.m. on March 20 and April 3.
Coming out
■ “Just Fall” by Nina Sadowsky (Ballantine)
■ “Switched On: A Memoir of Brain Change and Emotional Wakening” by John Elder Robison (Spiegel & Grau)
■ “The Summer Before the War” by Helen Simonson (Random House)
Pick of the week
Karin Schott of Devaney, Doak & Garrett Booksellers in Farmington, Maine, recommends “Uprooted” by Naomi Novik (Del Rey): “The Dragon, a wizard, takes a girl every 10 years as payment for protecting the village. Agnieszka is chosen. Through her own awkward experience she discovers hidden strengths and powers. This fantasy novel has an unlikely romance and a menacing force that propels the story.”
Jan Gardner can be reached at JanLGardner@yahoo.com.
Due to a reporting error, an item in the New England Literary News column in the Sunday Books section incorrectly stated that the region has faced only three hurricanes in the past five centuries. There were many more that reached the coast, but only three hit the interior of New England. The piece also incorrectly said that New Hampshire and Vermont were the states that had the largest number of fatalities in the Hurricane of 1938. While those two states suffered unprecedented damage to forests, most of the 600 deaths were due to the storm surge, which mainly affected New York, Rhode Island, and Connecticut.