First published 2021
January 12, 1888 begins warm in Dakota Territory after weeks of bitter cold. Children walk to their one-room schoolhouses without heavy coats. Parents venture outside again. Then at dismissal time, a massive blizzard roars across the prairie with no warning. Sixteen-year-old schoolteachers suddenly must make an impossible decision. Keep the students inside and watch them freeze as fuel runs out, or send them into the whiteout hoping they reach home alive. The storm moves too fast for anyone to prepare. Visibility drops to zero. Temperatures plummet. These young teachers, barely older than their students, hold dozens of lives in their hands. Some choose one path, some another. All face the same terror as the blizzard transforms familiar prairie into a death trap. Benjamin follows multiple teachers and families as they struggle against a storm that will claim over 200 lives and become known as the Children's Blizzard.
Genres: historical-fiction, 20th-century, 19th-century, historical-drama, american-history
Vibes: atmospheric, emotional, suspenseful
Tropes: impossible-choice, survival
Setting: Dakota Territory
Period: 1888
448 pages · Library Binding · Center Point
Content warnings: child-death, death