Blog | awintersflood

"so vivid you could feel yourself there"

"love and suspense, hardship and endurance, all woven into the tragedy of the city's flood"

"page turner"

Louisville, Ky., January, 1937

A new year begins with the hope that the city is leaving behind the desperate days of the Depression -- until a record flood forces two-thirds of its citizens from their homes.

Miranda Kinley doesn't want to evacuate. She doesn't want to leave her home, her haven from the world. But when she is surrounded by floodwater, her husband missing, and her best friend's young daughter in her care, she may not have a choice.

Blended with humor and mystery, this dramatic tale follows a young couple -- torn between his desire for a family and her doubt that she’d make a good mother -- as their lives, and the lives of their neighbors, are forever changed by a devastating flood.

"great bookclub read"

Maybe we're a little spoiled...

Maybe we're a little spoiled...

Imagine graduating from high school in 1930. The economy has crashed. Crashed. Not just a dip in the stock market that slows things down. You'll be lucky to find a job and even luckier to hold onto it over the next six years. You'll probably be supported by the one person in your family who has managed to not get laid off. Then, in 1937, if you live in Louisville, KY, or any other town along the Ohio River, you are forced from your home by the Great Flood, forced to stay with

The Times They Are A-Changin'

The Times They Are A-Changin'

Released by Bob Dylan in 1964, the song, The Times They Are A-Changin', came out three years after Louisville had already made a time change. In 1961, the city moved (without really moving, of course) from the Central time zone to Eastern. Parts of the state still remain on "slow time" and like it that way. Though you might wonder why, since the sun comes up and goes down an hour earlier. On July 15, 1936, at the height of a record drought and heatwave, light dawned over the

It wasn't just a white person's flood

It wasn't just a white person's flood

We may not like to think about it, but segregation was the norm in Louisville in the 1930s. And so it follows that, during the 1937 Flood, African-Americans had their own designated places to be sheltered and fed. Soon, the generation that lived through the Great Flood of 1937 will no longer be here to tell us their stories. One of the reasons I wrote A Winter's Flood was to preserve a glimpse of life in Louisville during that time. But as I was writing Miranda's story, I rea

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