Robert Mykle

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Synopsis
On September 16, 1928, after a murderous journey through the Caribbean and the Bahamas, a category % hurricane smashed into Palm Beach, Florida, leaving nearly 2,400 corpses in its wake. It remains the second deadliest hurrican in U.S. history, surpassed only by the Great Galveston Hurricane of 1900. The 1928 hurricane decimated large swaths of land, while the acompanying seventeen-foot storm surge sent water roaring through the neighboring towns of Chosen, Belle Glade, and South Bay.

Killer 'Cane offers readers a heart-stopping tale of the storm -- from its inception off the west coast of Africa, through its rapid growth to a rare category 5 rating and its awesome destructive path, to its final demise two weeks later. Based on extensive original research and two dozen interviews, this history also provides a compelling portrait of the hurricane's victims: the bustling pioneering towns and communities situated in the eye of the American Dream. There, the cheap land, muck-rich soil, latest technology, and profitable harvests lulled the populace into thinking that they had tamed the Everglades and even nature herself. Here are the farmers and frontier wives, their children, store owners, entrepreneurs, moonshiners, rumrunners, and black migrant workers -- all brought to vivid life as they confront one of nature's most vicious manifestations.

Killer 'Cane addresses such controversial issues as the shocking inadequacy of the National Weather Bureau to predict the storm's course and to warn the populace of its looming fury; how business leaders, politicians, and the media colluded to downplay the impending hurricane so as not to disturb the revenue from tourism; how racist biases and segregation contributed to the higher proportion of blacks in the death toll (more than three-quarters of the dead were black); and how African Americans were impressed to gather corpses decomposing in the tropical heat and to move debris. In the tradition of Isaac's Storm) and The Perfect Storm, Killer 'Cane recreates an encounter with nature that readers will not forget.

Robert Mykle, a writer for the Cape Cod Times, the Palm Beach Post, and numerous other publications, lives in Lake Worth, Florida.… (altro)