Customer Reviews

Killer 'Cane: The Deadly Hurricane of 1928

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"Killer 'Cane" is an excellent book, written in a fresh and exacting style, with the details that make it come alive. Like the other great books of the disaster genre, like Walter Lord's "Titanic" and the Jim Bishop books about presidential assassinations, "Killer 'Cane" takes the reader right into the scene: Belle Glade, Florida Everglades, 1928, when a monstrous hurricane swept in without warning.

Mykle gives us a large cast of real-life people, and fills us in on their stories, on what had brought them to the area, on their aspirations for a future which for many, never came. It's a slight bit confusing as he jumps around to scenes from the past, juxtapositioning them with the current life of the area and its characters. That said, it's satisfying to piece it all together. As an absorbing movie does, this book engages us with the characters and causes us at times to hold our breath as we await the outcome of their fates. Mykle writes well, using a wide vocabulary and an authentic descriptive style to present not only the people, but the land, and then the storm, as well. This book will keep you riveted until you finish it. Kudoes to Mykle, and the highest recommendation for his work.

Killer 'cane is a well researched book about the 1928 hurricane that swept through the Caribbean and the Bahamas as a category 5 and then hit the Florida coast around Palm Beach.
The research includes 20 original interviews of individuals by the author and several interviews done by others, as well as numerous documents, books, articles and pamphlets.
The lack of forecasting knowledge, the limited understanding of the potential danger and the desire to not frighten people ( tourists and land investors) all combined with the sheer power of an approaching category 5 hurricane to create unimaginable devastation and destruction.
Robert Mykle gives the history of the Lake Okeechobee area, explaining the richness of the land, the potential for farming as well as the hardships faced. The creation of the wall to hold back the water seemed so right at the time. Mykle puts the human face on the disaster by introducing the families that lived and struggled with life on the edge of the Everglades, the farmers, the entrepreneurs, the migrant workers. We see and get a taste of their hopes and dreams, and then we see it all wiped clean.
Mykle also includes enough meteorology facts for a basic understanding of hurricane formation and motion.
Forecasting has come so far and yet there is still so much that can change, unpredictably, in the blink of an eye, that this is an important book to read to remind us of the pure power that a hurricane can unleash on us.
After having been through Fran, Bonnie, Floyd, Dennis (in NC) Isabel (in VA) and Charlie & Frances (in FL) and currently watching the approach of IVAN I think it is important to not grow complacent and to be able to put a human face on the destruction a hurricane leaves in it's wake.

I grew up in this area during the forties and fifties.I attended high school with many decedants of the victims and survivers of this disaster.The book seems to be quiet accurate and hits the nail on the head .It amazes me that it has to be the best kept secret of all diasters.I live in the neighboring state of Georgia,and when I ask people in this area about the storm no one has a clue.At the time it was the third worst disaster to have occured ,in terms of lives lost. What a shame.

There has been quite a glut lately of weather-related disaster books, and the quality of these books has varied widely. "Killer 'Cane," though a bit rough in places, is one of the better efforts in the genre. The book tells the story of the 1928 hurricane that devastated the Florida Everglades, killing perhaps as many as 3000 people when the Lake Okeechobee Dike gave away. Author Robert Mykle sets up his story well, providing a generous helping of historical background and meterological facts.

Mykle spends much of the first half of the book describing everyday life in the Everglades in the early 20th Century. He particularly focuses his attention on several families who had settled there hoping to scratch a decent living out of the "mucklands," as drained Everglades swamps were called. Mykle the shows how poor forecasting, inept politicians and ignorance of the landscape combined with sheer bad luck to cause a tragedy that could have been greatly diminished if the victims had been given adequate time to evacuate the lowlands.

Mykle is a decent storyteller, but the book does have a couple of drawbacks. Mykle largely ignores that great devastation that the 1928 storm wrought upon numerous islands in the Caribbean, including Puerto Rico, giving these other disasters only a cursory mention. He also has a tendency to repeat himself in the text and portions of the book are very poorly edited.

Overall, a readable an interesting book for those who love a goodweather-related disaster tale.

In the early period of the last century three great hurricanes devastated Florida. Miami was hit in 1926, The everglades in 28, and the keys in 35. The Miami storm is known for finishing the land boom and the keys storm is famous for being the most powerful hurricane ever and killing WWI veterans on work detail. Mykle's book examines the least well known of the three, the storm of 1928. The everglades storm actually killed the most people by far, but is less well remembered because most of its victims were poor and black. But the hurricane makes for a fascinating story in any case. Mykle tells it through the lives of several everglades families who experienced the calamity, often suffering considerable loss. He covers the disaster from several angles, and so there is something in this book for everyone.

My one fault with this book is that the author focuses a little too much on the individuals and not enough on other features of the catastrophe. We hear little, for instance, about what the hurricane did to Puerto Rico. But this should not dissuade anyone from buying the book on the killer Cane of 28.

Every adult who lives within 50 miles of the Atlantic or Gulf coasts of the United States should read Killer Cane. Hurricanes are deadly, but quiet hurricane seasons in the past decade have given coastal residents a sense that hurricanes won't hit them. But they will. I survived two hurricanes, and they were pure horror. They were Category One hurricanes, the weakest kind, but they tore off roofs and smashed property like gigantic maniacs.

Robert Mykle's fine book describes a Category Four hurricane that came ashore near Palm Beach in 1928. A Category One hurricane causes some damage, while a Category Five causes complete destruction, so you can imagine the strength of a Category Four. But destruction didn't stop at the coast. The hurricane moved inland to rip into the farming communities at the south end of Lake Okeechobee, 40-50 miles inland from Palm Beach. Winds of 150 miles-per-hour and more than 12 inches of rain destroyed almost everything in its path, and killed some 2000 people. The real cost of this disaster is the effect on its victims, and Mykle introduces us to many of the doomed families as they go about their business, not knowing that the day after tomorrow will be their last on earth. We come to care about them. We mourn those killed and feel the suffering of survivors in the aftermath. This is a great strength of the book, and Robert Mykle has done a terific job of presenting a harrowing story in human terms. It is well worth reading.

Killer 'Cane is not solely a book on the devastation that occurred in Florida by the humongous, yet forgotten, hurricane of 1928. It also goes into the history of Florida, explaining why the pioneers were attracted to Florida, their struggle, and how, at the pinnacle of their success, their lives were changed forever.
I enjoyed reading the history of Florida and I was also gripped and amazed by the stories of those who survived the hurricane. It is scary to think that such destruction and horror can occur anywhere near the coast. Yet even though approximately 2,400 people died, this hurricane and the lives destroyed by it was practically forgotten. This hurricane was the deadliest in the history of Florida, yet no one has heard about it. At least this book tales the stories of those who survived and now, hopefully, they won't be forgotten again.

A natural disaster looms on the horizon but government and financial leaders play down the danger because of the possible loss of tourist and investor dollars. The public is than caught completely off-guard when the disaster strikes and the carnage is far worse than anyone could have predicted. If this scenario sounds familiar it's because Hollywood has served up this basic formula for years in films ranging from "Earthquake" to "Jaws." Robert Mykle has given us the very same plot in this book but in this case the story is horribly real.

In the early twentieth century there was a land boom in Florida as the wealthy discovered the warm climate and farmers discovered the extremely rich soil around the Everglades. World War I caused a great demand for vegetables and the rich "muck" of the Everglades could produce two or three excellent crops a year with green beans being the prime crop. With vegetable prices at an all time high the farmers of the area spent a great deal of time and effort trying to push Lake Okeechobee back in order to uncover more crop land. It never seemed to occur to them that one day the lake just might push back.

In 1928 when the category four "Killer 'Cane" hit the area the lake did indeed push back and by the time the storm had passed most of South Florida was under two to three feet of water. Of course two or three feet of water isn't going to kill many people but the eighteen foot storm surge created on the lake was more than capable of taking many thousands of lives. As recently as 2001 human bones were still being plowed up in fields where they were buried by the storm in the muck they had so lusted after. Unlike the disaster movie villains Hollywood has produced however the Florida authorities didn't learn their lesson and managed to undercount the dead by at least a thousand people so as not to scare away the tourists.

Robert Mykle has written a very credible account of this tragic event and his method is one that makes the hurricane seem very real. Much of the book is taken in introducing the reader to the people and places that are about to be blasted by this killer storm. The author goes back many years in tracing some of these families and their migration to the Everglades and he does manage to make the reader feel as if they actually know some of these people. His method succeeds in making all of the death, suffering and destruction hit home with the reader but he takes his method to extremes sometimes and goes back a bit too far, making the story drag a just a tad at times. He also makes several historical statements that are simply not true and although they don't deal directly with the storm these kinds of errors certainly hurt the author's credibility. Just to quickly mention three of these errors; Andrew Jackson was not born west of the Appalachian Mountains, General Meade was never removed as commander of the Army of the Potomac by Abe Lincoln and there were no Axis Powers in World War I. It's picky I know but someone writing a history book just shouldn't make these kinds of errors.

Overall though this was a very good and readable book. The author does an excellent job of relating pertinent meteorological data such a way that it made it clear and understandable and in a book like this one that is a very important task. His verbal descriptions of the devastation are also very good and his blow by blow description of the storm as it pounded its victims was extraordinarily good. Mykle in fact had done such a good job of introducing some families that I found myself hanging on every word to see who survived and who didn't.

In short, there are some flat spots in this book but it contains a story that needs to be told and told with heart. Robert Mykle has accomplished this task admirably.

Robert Mykle's superbly researched book is fascinating reading for anyone interested in hurricane history and South Florida. Mr Mykle has woven the personal stories of families as they endured tragic devastation and death, with a focus on the even sadder accounts of the fates of African-Americans who also suffered from the destructive attitudes of the times.
(My grandparents often told of climbing up to the attic during that storm of 1928 in their Moore Haven office/apartment as the water rose and the winds raged, and of clinging to each other and the attic beams, praying that the winds died before the building did. They survived, but knew many from "across the lake" who disappeared or drowned.)
Author Mykle brings the area, the community, and its residents to vivid life, with a sense of place and times that is equal to the best of the finest writers and historians.
The book is worth owning for the extensive bibliogrpahy alone!

This was the first hurricane book I read and because of it I have read 4 more. The fact that this storm is hardly ever brought up in discussions about the worst hurricanes ever is beyond me. It not only covers the storm and the people involved with great detail and accuracy, but also the old Floridian history in the southern Lake Okeechobee areas. Due to a lack of census information and inaccurate death tolls this may have been(according to experts) the deadliest hurricane ever. Most believe the death toll being closer to 2,000 than the "official" number given. You get to know the characters to a point that when disaster strikes you almost feel like your reading about people you know. Even though it's not a large book( page wise) it seems to have all the information you could need or want on this tragic event. I have since read another book on this same storm, it too was a good book, but I personally think this one is better. I will always wonder(having been through 5 hurricanes myself, including Andrew, and the eyes of Francis, Jean, and Wilma) how these people must have felt when these storms rolled over them. No radar, no tv, no radio, no warning whatsoever. No chance to really prepare or plan or even evacuate. It just amazes me. If you like history or especially natural disaster type books at their finest, buy this book.