A World Turned Over : A Killer Tornado and the Lives It Changed Forever (Paperback)

by Lorian Hemingway (Author) "IT WAS A WILD PLACE ONCE, the Civil War battlefield at Vicksburg, so wild you could imagine that the dead here still spoke, that from..." (more)
Key Phrases: same dirt, tornado hit, fog machine, Larry Swales, Cooper Road, Caney Creek (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
On March 3, 1966, a devastating tornado struck the Candlestick Shopping Center in South Jackson, Miss., flattening buildings and killing 14 people. Because her family had just moved away from their home across the road from the shopping center, Hemingway (granddaughter of Ernest Hemingway and author of Walking into the River), who was a child at the time, missed the disaster. All her life she has been obsessed with it, however, and in 2000 she went back to learn about it from childhood friends who were there. In this moving book, she tells the story twice, first in her own words and then in the words of the survivors whom she had interviewed. Weaving nostalgia for the world of her childhood with apocalyptic images of that world "rolled onto a spear, of the sky punctured at its heart," Hemingway skillfully draws the reader into the nightmare, describing the moments preceding the tornado and the instant when everything was turned upside down. Without overwriting, Hemingway describes how a familiar setting is suddenly turned into a morass of shattered concrete, twisted metal, splintered glass, mangled cars and broken bodies and how everyone walks and speaks "with reverence because what is heaving and bending at jagged turns all around them is a burial ground they must undo." Even after Candlestick Shopping Center was rebuilt, the people stayed away because they found they couldn't bear to remember.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal
The granddaughter of Ernest Hemingway and author of a novel (Walking into the River) and a memoir, Hemingway was a girl when she and her family moved away from a Jackson, MS, neighborhood that soon after was hit by a devastating tornado. Dubbed the "Candlestick Tornado" after the brand-new shopping center it leveled, it struck in March 1966, and killed 57 people. This book is both a description of the personal and physical damage the tornado caused and a memoir of the author's first return to the neighborhood since she moved away. She describes visits to old friends and others who survived the disaster or lost loved ones. Rather than describing the scientific aspects of tornadoes, Hemingway focuses on their social and emotional ramifications, considering how Southerners deal with tragedies and how tornadoes fit into Southern culture. This well-researched book includes excerpts from interviews the author conducted that show how the disaster forever changed the survivors and the neighborhood. Recommended for most libraries.
- Jeffrey Beall, Univ. of Colorado Lib., Denver
Copyright 2002 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: 256 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (July 8, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743247671
• ISBN-13: 978-0743247672
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,348,372 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A Literary Disaster, August 7, 2002

By	Brian D. Rubendall (Oakton, VA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: A World Turned Over : A Killer Tornado and the Lives It Changed Forever (Hardcover)

Warning: If you are looking for a good disaster story with a straightforward narrative account, then steer well clear of "A World Turned Over." The cardinal rule in such books is that the author should stand aside and allow the horrific events and the accounts of the survivors speak for themselves, maybe providing a little commentary along the way. Unfortunately, this tragic tale of a killer tornado is conveyed with so much overloaded flowery literary prose as to render it virtually unreadable. For example, here is a direct quote from page 70 describing the tornado: "Cruel and without conscience, calculated in its killing, the wolf at the door was deadlier than the red-haired boy could ever have known. The world rolled onto its side, the ground was pulled into the sky, the prayers for mercy given up were given back, and up into the dark column rose our sense of place and those who had made it so..."

If passages like the above were lightly scattered throughout the book, it would be one thing. But they appear repeatedly on just about every page. Given that the victims of the tornado were, for the most part ordinary small town folk, the literary pretentions of the book seem even more inappropriate. Author Lorian Hemingway had a close personal connection to the disaster, having moved from Jackson, Mississippi, as a teenager only a few months before it happened. She knew most of the victims personally. Nevertheless, I can't imagine that anyone who does not have a personal connection to the disaster will be able to make it to the end of this book.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars genetic legacy no guarantee of inherited talent, June 22, 2005

By	writer (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A World Turned Over : A Killer Tornado and the Lives It Changed Forever (Hardcover)

I'm afraid I agree with Mr. Rubendall. As a weather afficianado I began WORLD TURNED OVER with enthusiasm, but Ms. Hemingway's self-important florid prose and sticky nostalgia eclipsed the real tragedy that cost many of her chlidhood acquaintances their lives. In dwelling overly long on her own recollections and, one suspects, in trying to ape the style of her famous grandfather (a lack of contractions doesn't make writing more profound, just more pompous!), Ms. Hemingway actually does the Candlestick tornado, its victims, and its survivors, a disservice. The book would have been much better off written in the analytical style and format of, for instance, Sebastian Junger's PERFECT STORM, or Erik Larson's ISAAC'S STORM; more journalistic integrity and less faux lyricism would have benefitted Candlestick's survivors and victims and made this a much more engaging read. If you're fascinated with weather, you'd be better off with the above books--or nonfiction accounts provided by tornado survivors--or just watching the Weather Channel's Storm Story account of the Candlestick tornado. My apologies to the author, but WORLD TURNED OVER was a real disappointment.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Author needs to do her research., March 3, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: A World Turned Over : A Killer Tornado and the Lives It Changed Forever (Hardcover)

As a native of Jackson, Mississippi (the Belhaven area was my home from birth until I moved to VA at the age of 23) I can honestly say that this book does not do justice to either the people involved or the event itself. I was born in 1973, several years after the infamous tornado, but am very familiar with the story and the places involved in the event. There are many errors regarding locations in south Jackson. The Green Derby (incorrectly listed in the book as the brown derby) was indeed located in south Jackson and was demolished in the late 80's... there is no possible way for the author to have seen it during her research as it simply was not there. The community of BYRAM is consistently referred to as Byrum (a simple glance at any map of the state would have rectified this error). Also, there are no live oaks in Jackson, they are located almost exclusively on the coast. There were very few eyewitness interviews in the book and very little on the impact the event had upon the community of south Jackson. If the author was unable to track down those involved the MS Dept. of Archives and History has a wonderful file filled with eyewitness accounts that is just waiting for a competent researcher. The author states that Candlestick was abandoned due to a lingering sense of doom brought forth by the tornado. In fact, the shopping center did very well for a number of years after the tornado and was only abandoned when the entire south side of Jackson became too dangerous for commerce. The shopping centers that line McDowell Road (mere blocks from Candlestick) are also in a state of disrepair and abandonment and were never subjected to a tornado's wrath. I did not care for Ms. Hemingway's style of writing in the least ...