The Children's Blizzard

This year's One Book One Community selection in Alliance is The Children's Blizzard by Melanie Benjamin. Readers who have participated in past OBOC events in Alliance will be familiar with the structure: various presentations over the next several months dealing with issues in the book, climaxing with a personal appearance by the author. 

Despite its somber subject matter, Benjamin’s book is an enjoyable read. Based on a real-life tragedy, the book tracks the story of two (fictional) siblings, Gerda and Raina Olsen, and the very different choices they make on January 12, 1888, the fateful day when a sudden and violent prairie blizzard strikes Nebraska and the Dakota Territory. Saying which sister makes the right choice and which the wrong would rob the book of much of its suspense, so I’ll avoid dropping spoilers.

The book also provides insight into the practice of using very young women— girls, really—as school teachers in the West. Raina Olsen is sixteen at the time of the story, just one year older than her oldest student. Young women like Raina and Gerta were responsible not only to teach all subjects to a single room full of students of diverse languages and needs, but also to clean the building, ensure a supply of wood or coal for heat, and occasionally make life-or-death decisions that would tax even today’s highest-paid superintendents. 

Benjamin does a great job of describing in detail the suddenness of the storm, the bone-chilling cold and low visibility that resulted, and the many deaths, some of which were not discovered until the spring thaw. She contrasts the story of the homesteaders, lured in many cases, out west under false pretenses with the story of Omaha-based newspaper writer Gavin Woodson, responsible for some of the flowery copy that falsely painted Nebraska and the surrounding areas a garden of eden ripe for the picking. 

Comparisons to Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books are inevitable. A quote from Oprah Daily on the back cover notes that Wilder fans will also like this novel, which is probably accurate. Benjamin also invites such comparisons through “Little Schoolhouse on the Prairie,” an afterword in the paperback edition that delves into the responsibilities of prairie schoolteachers and references the long-running television series based on Wilder’s books. 

Benjamin’s work is more nuanced because it takes into account injustices faced by American Indians, displaced by the government and forced to live on reservations, their children schooled by institutions that sought to strip them of their heritage. The Children’s Blizzard also provides a Black American perspective through the character of Ollie Tennant, a bartender in Omaha who moves his family to a different part of the city once it becomes clear that white residents do not prioritize his children’s education or physical health. 

These are important reminders that much of America’s legacy has been stamped over the unwilling sacrifices of others. These scenes don’t overwhelm the narrative, but they deepen it. 

The novel also underscores, even in the halcyon days of the nineteenth century, the role of mass media (in this case, newspapers) to shape reality and to support the welfare of big businesses (the railroads). Woodson, who sets out to redeem himself after writing glowing puff pieces that coax people out west, instead becomes a participant in growing his paper’s circulation through romanticized stories of heroism involving the blizzard. His is a dubious redemption. 

I recommend The Children’s Blizzard. It spotlights a largely forgotten incident in American history, evokes a sense of bone-chilling cold, and provides plenty of food for thought. 

To learn more about the Alliance OBOC program for 2023, visit the Rodman Library website.