Mikealbo's Reviews > The Terrible Wave

I recently learned that Cookie Mueller wrote a novel at age 10 about the Johnstown Flood — still considered the most devastating flood in US history, when a neglected earth dam sent a huge wall of water down into Johnstown PA on May 31, 1889, killing thousands. I feel closer to her (every NYC writer wishes they were) bc I've been fascinated by the Flood since age 10, too, when I read THIS book, The Terrible Wave. I re-read it this summer. It holds up and doesn’t.
A rainy day in 1889. Megan, a spoiled (but not unlikeable) rich girl, sits in her attic obsessing over a boy she flirted with last night. Water swirls around the house, a wave demolishes it, she falls out the window on a floating mattress. Before rereading I recalled nothing else about the book, which follows Megan as she returns to the devastated town to find her family. Scenes of destruction are well rendered, and Marden Dahlstedt (what a name!) is careful describing death but doesn’t avoid it. Who lives and dies is as cruel and random as it should be. There’s even a moral dilemma when one character (a shifty grifty actor) steals from the dead. But there’s also gender stereotypes, no surprise. After the disaster, “some of the sight’s [Megan] saw were almost comical. An old man…dressed in a red flannel petticoat. A fat lady wearing an oversize pair of men’s boots...” People cross dressing! Ban this book in Florida!

Timed with finishing it, I finally made it to the Johnstown Flood Museum. (I have a morbid bucket list). Photos of disaster tourists in front of a house w a tree jutting out (an iconic image) were proof that peeps r always gawkin. There’s something about the topography of Johnstown - it’s scarily easy to imagine a 30 foot high wall of water blasting through. What a sad event. In the center of the museum theres a big map of the floods path along with a looping soundtrack of screams. The attendant turned it on when i arrived and I'm sure turned it off when i left.