Full Description
On April 27, 2011, just days after learning of their pregnancy, B. J. Hollars, his wife, and their future son endured the onslaught of an EF-4 tornado. There, while huddled in a bathtub in their Alabama home, mortality flashed before their eyes. With the last of his computer battery, Hollars began recounting the experience, and would continue to do so in the following years, writing his way out of one disaster only to find himself caught up in another. Tornadoes, drownings, and nuclear catastrophes force him to acknowledge the inexplicable, while he attempts to overcome his greatest fear—the impossibility of protecting his newborn son from the world's cruelties. Hollars creates a constellation of grief, tapping into the rarely acknowledged intersection between fatherhood and fear, sacrifice and safety, and the humbling effect of losing control of our lives.
Contents
Acknowledgments
I. Dizzied
Goodbye, Tuscaloosa
A Test of the Emergency Alert System
Epistle to an Embryo
To the Good People of Joplin
Fifty Ways of Looking at Tornadoes
The Longest Wait
II. Drowned
The Girl in the Surf
Dispatches from the Drownings
Buckethead
The Changing
Death by Refrigerator
III. Dropped
Fabricating Fear
Fort Wayne Is Still Seventh on Hitler's List
The Year of the Great Forgetting
Hirofukushima
Punch Line
Bedtime Story
Works Consulted
Credits
Book Club Guide
