Under a Flaming Sky: The Great Hinckley Firestorm of 1894

I have this strange fascination for disaster survival stories. I think what draws me to them the most is discovering the way people respond when such awful things occur. This book I've read before interestingly enough, but it felt like a first read. Brown has done a phenomenal job of putting the reader in the story. Not only does he tell the story of a horrible wildfire that wreaked havoc, but he also delves into some of the things society has learned about fire over the last hundred years. He talks about several different kinds of fires and what made this one so dangerous. He compares the Hinckley fire to several other deadly fires that have occurred over the years, which made it easier to understand just how big this fire got. Admittedly, it was hard to read about the people dying, fire is a horrible way to die after all. But the part that made me the sickest and yet impressed me the most were the descriptions of what the rescuers and clean-up crews found when they came to help. I was really impressed by how many people jumped in to provide help and how fast they did it. How the rescuers managed to face the horribly burned bodies of men, women, and children, I really don't know, but I admire them for doing so. Like most such survival stories, there were those who behaved heroically and those who focused solely on their own survival. There were even looters and tourists who came to gawk. But I think, underneath it all, this is a story about families, some who survived, and many who died, together.

What a gifted author. At times, it reads like horror (which is not a stretch considering the subject matter) and I found myself going entire paragraphs without taking a breath. And while other writers might use it as padding, Brown has a masterful way of pausing the action to give scientific context to the story. By the time you finish these informational passages, you have been armed with knowledge that sheds a whole new light on the narrative. I cannot recommend this enough, and when you've finshed it, grab a copy of Brown's masterpiece, The Indifferent Stars Above. You will not be disappointed.

Absolutely a real nail-biter of a book. I couldn't put it down, just so tragic but also had heroic acts of courage. Best book i've read in ages, I'm going to share it with my son, who is a history buff, he'll love it.A real classic.

This wasn't a forest fire as much as an atomic bomb scale of event. I toured the museum in Hinckley the last time I was back in Minnesota. They have a great dvd they show that they put together but sadly won't produce it and offer for sale. There were many survivors and the museum has a 3 ring binder with their stories. Many of course are the same story pretty much with the notable exception of the locomotive engineers. Many books are simply a compilation of those many stories but this book puts them all together in a fascinating and exciting read without disrespecting anyone's experience.I was born in 1951 in MN and raised there. My family is from the Moose Lake area where there was another, larger fire in 1918. The Hinckley fire of 1894 and that fire were the two disasters that finally prompted MN to pass forestry regulations with teeth in them. Sadly, much of the soil in that east central part of the state had been destroyed by that time. To this day the native rocky soil will support shallow root crops like alfalfa but the white pine forests will never come back because the atomic bomb level of heat has sterilized the earth that took thousands of years to develop.If you can imagine living in that part of the country where they only sounds were nature and steam powered machine sounds. One hot late summer day the first indication you get of danger is a sound like Niagra falls. It's almost impossible to image the scale of this type of heat but the book brings it to life. If you are prone to nightmares you might want to be careful with this book. All true.

I've read this and The Boys In The Boat and both are outstanding examples of good writing. Brown's narrative immediately grabs you and pulls you into the story. You can feel the pain that these folks went through.

A very well written and informative book. I didn't know a fraction of what I learned about fire and what people had to deal with before our current knowledge and fire fighting expertise. One of the reasons I chose this book was because Daniel James Brown also wrote, "The Boys in the Boat", one of the best books that I have ever read.

Interesting book.

Great writing and a riveting read.

Brilliant read, makes one wonder how people survived all the hardship and sorrow.You can certainly understand post traumatic stress disorder is after reading this book.!

A great piece of historical fiction, fiction only in that the details wouldn't be known for some of the responses of the people, they would have been ascertained by forensics, but the author has truly given this horrible true event a life of its own, you can almost feel the heat, hear the cries and it is all brought back to reality of the horrors these people lived through and the herculean task undertaken to help the survivors

The book is typical of other books that provide much more information about the culture of the era than one would expect. Great detail. It's reminds us of the power of a large fire and the way that it creates its own weather system.