To Sleep with the Angels: The Story of a Fire [Paperback]

David Cowan (Author), John Kuenster (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 1998

If burying a child has a special poignancy, the tragedy at a Catholic elementary school in Chicago almost forty years ago was an extraordinary moment of grief. One of the deadliest fires in American history, it took the lives of ninety-two children and three nuns at Our Lady of the Angels School, left many families physically and psychologically scarred for life, and destroyed a close-knit working-class neighborhood. This is the moving story of that fire and its consequences written by two journalists who have been obsessed with the events of that terrible day in December 1958. It is a story of ordinary people caught up in a disaster that shocked the nation. In gripping detail, those who were there—children, teachers, firefighters—describe the fear, desperation, and panic that prevailed in and around the stricken school building on that cold Monday afternoon. But beyond the flames, the story of the fire at Our Lady of the Angels became an enigma whose mystery has deepened with time: its cause was never officially explained despite evidence that it had been intentionally set by a troubled student at the school. The fire led to a complete overhaul of fire safety standards for American schools, but it left a community torn apart by grief and anger, and accusations that the Catholic church and city fathers had shielded the truth. Messrs. Cowan and Kuenster have recreated this tragedy in a powerful narrative with all the elements of a first-rate detective story.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

On December 1, 1958, a fire at Our Lady of the Angels School in Chicago killed 92 pupils, most between the ages of nine and 12, and three nuns. This deeply affecting account of that tragedy by two Illinois journalists recreates the horror that destroyed a school and parish. The causes of the tragedy were manifold: outdated fire laws that permitted an edifice built before 1908 to escape a code passed in 1949 to insure safer schools; severe overcrowding; delay in reporting the fire; nuns ordering their pupils to pray rather than try to escape. Nor did municipal and archdiocesan officials help matters, their philosophy being that the fire was best forgotten; when a former student admitted to setting the blaze, they tried to conceal his confession. One positive result of the fire were the safety improvements made in 16,500 U.S. school buildings within a year. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Cowan, an independent journalist in the Chicago area, and Kuenster, a former reporter and columnist for the Chicago Daily News, fashion a gripping story from the events surrounding the tragic 1958 fire that swept through Chicago's Our Lady of the Angels elementary school. The fire, which left 92 elementary school children and three nuns dead, had profound effects on surviving students, parents, the surrounding neighborhood, and the city of Chicago. The tragedy spawned a nationwide school fire-safety program that is now often taken for granted. Cowan and Kuenster piece together a moving narrative based on the eyewitness accounts of surviving children, parents, firemen, doctors, nurses, and arson investigators. Although appropriate for any collection that serves general readers, this book is particularly recommended for Chicago-area libraries.
Robert J. Favini, Bentley Coll. Lib., Waltham, Mass.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 312 pages
• Publisher: Ivan R. Dee; 1 edition (October 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 156663217X
• ISBN-13: 978-1566632171
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (105 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #143,066 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #58 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Regional U.S. > Midwest

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Solid Reporting Makes For Compelling Reading, November 12, 2002

By 

Edward Garea "Edward Garea" (Branchville, New Jersey United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: To Sleep with the Angels: The Story of a Fire (Hardcover)

Many books have been written about real-life tragedies, and in this sense, Cowan and Kuenster's book is no different. However, there is a thin line in these type of books between boring the reader by burying the human aspect of the story with an overload of factual material and becoming nothing more than a non-fiction hankie weeper. Quite a few books have disappointed me in the past by straying to either one side or the other. Not so with this one. It is a solid piece of reporting that does not lose the human dimension of the tragedy. Nor does it obscure the investigation and the facts with too much emphasis on the human dimension.

The fire at Our Lady of the Angels was one of the worst tragedies to strike America, made even more so in that the vast majority of its victims were innocent children. The authors follow the story from the day it occured to the fire itself and the heroic efforts of the fire department to the later delegation of blame and recriminations from what was seen as a bureaucratic conspiracy. In doing so they manage to bring the reader into the story not merely as a spectator but almost as a fellow reporter, sharing not only facts, but also conjectures and whispers plus personal items about the victims, always careful always to straddle the line between objectivity and thje trap of a "crusading" journalism. By letting the story speak for itself, they bring it home all the more forcefully, to where no one who reads it will remain unaffected.

This book should also serve as a warning against the false sense of security that this sort of thing cannot happen again. There are still many schools, public and private, at risk, and this is a book that should be read by every parent with children still in school, and not only during Fire Prevention Week.

27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Unbelievable sadness, December 7, 1999

By 

N. Donohoe (Glenview, IL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: To Sleep with the Angels: The Story of a Fire (Hardcover)

This book took me back to a painful time in otherwise happy years as a child. In December of 1958 I was a third grader at St. Peter Canisius School, just northwest of OLA. I can remember watching the news bulletins on television, my mother weeping and praying and the unbelievable sadness at the sight of the dozens of small coffins. The changes in school fire codes were swift. Before the end of the school year, we were on half-day shifts because our basement classroom (somewith block glass windows) did not meet fire code. The authors of this book have brought to light that the 93 OLA martyrs left a legacy of change and improved safety for school children across the country and even around the world. I, too, was compelled to go back to the old neighborhoods - down North Avenue, past what used to be St. Anne's on Thomas Street where I was born, to Avers and Iowa. The authors remark how not even a plaque on the property remembers those who died. Even at this late date, I hope something will be done to remedy that injustice. I could not stop reading this book - even once past the horror of the actual fire, the investigative reporting was clear, concise, riveting and brings answers to so many questions. A must read, especially for Chicagoans.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book about an event that should be remembered, June 3, 2000

By 

Matthew Gunia (Justice, Illinois) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: To Sleep with the Angels: The Story of a Fire (Hardcover)

My father is a firefighter who is now at a firehouse that actually help to put out the OLA fire. He remembers seeing the fire from his house a few blocks away, but doesn't like to talk about it. One man my dad used to work with was actually on the run that put out the fire. He also refuses to talk about it. Why do I mention that? Because it illustrates the most powerful part of the book for me: the fact that the fire still haunts those whose lives were affected by it. The authors did an excellent job researching the fire and give a gripping account of how/where it started, when the children and nuns realized the danger they were in and the efforts to save their own lives as well as the lives of their friends. Then the book turns to the aftermath of the fire. Did you ever wonder how the parents of the deceased reacted when they were finally given the news? The authors follow the severly burned children to the hospitals and chronical their recoveries or slow, painful deaths. It looks at how the genuinely heroic firemen coped with watching children jump out of firey classrooms to their deaths. Finally, the authors investigate the cause of the fire and give compelling evidence concerning who they believe started the it. I highly recommend this book. Lots of people spend time reading about "great tragedies" like battles, murders, etc., but ignore the equally devistating tragedies that happen in their own neighborhoods