From the Flood tells the story of the author's experience with Hurricane Agnes as a young child. As a result of the hurricane, Suzanne and her family had to evacuate their home and live with family friends on higher grounds. As the hurricane raged on, Suzanne's childhood home and neighbourhood was completely destroyed. Suzanne describes the years that followed the flood and the efforts her family and community endured in trying to rebuild.
This memoir is told from a child's perspective, as the author was only about 6 when the hurricane hit, and much of the fear and excitement was told in a very innocent way. For example, Suzanne is more worried about having to leave the fun at her temporary home with family friends than about whatever happened to her house. It also demonstrates the resiliency of children as she was able to adapt quite well to each change.
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The book is divided into sections, each corresponding to an address where Suzanne lived in the 1970s. Chapters within the sections are titled by the month(s) and year that correspond to that chapter. For a young girl to have such a great memory of when each of these changes happened clearly says a lot about the challenges she faced and the impact this flood had on the rest of her life. The book is very easy to follow and it is always quite clear when and where the events take place.
The one thing that I didn't love about this book was the fact that the climax basically came in the first few chapters. The big, exciting moment of this story was the flood which took place at the very beginning. To be fair, this book is titled "From the Flood" and so it makes sense that the majority of the story would take place after the flood. However, I do feel that the years following the flood were not as exciting as the time of the flood. They were obviously very important to the story, how someone rebuilds after devastation is an important part of the conclusion of any story, but instead of being a few chapters or an epilogue, the conclusion and resolution was the story in itself. Suzanne's childhood was certainly interesting, and there were definitely some very unusual elements to her childhood that were defined because of the flood, for example living in a trailer on a golf course or the impact of her father's daily trips to the flood zone to rebuild his business and their home on his personality and their family as a whole. Suzanne also did a good job of wrapping things up when she ended the story, it just felt long and drawn out, not because it was boring but because the main action took place so early on.
I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys memoirs about traumatic experiences in childhood, natural disasters from history or books about coming of age in the 1970s. Thanks to Book Sirens, the author and the publisher for giving me the opportunity to read and review this book! I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
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