STOLEN BY THE SEA

In this oddly distant disaster tale, two young people from opposite sides of the socioeconomic tracks are caught in the devastating Galveston Hurricane of 1900. The storm takes a long time to arrive; meanwhile, suspicious of her father’s motives, Maggie responds with jealousy and cutting words to overtures of friendship from Felipe, a quiet, gentle orphan hired to do yard work. Come the catastrophe, the two are thrown together, and after temporarily rescuing a group of orphans (all, except for one of Felipe’s twin little sisters, eventually drown), then surviving the devastation, Maggie accepts Felipe into the family as readily as her father does. As Maggie not only behaves badly toward Felipe, but also torments the household’s cook and condescendingly (in Felipe’s view—and Myers presents no clear evidence to the contrary) gives Felipe’s sisters cast-off dolls, she comes across as particularly unlikable. Moreover, the author is so parsimonious with physical description that readers will have difficulty visualizing Galveston before and after the storm—or, for that matter, during, as despite occasional references to howling wind and violent rain the characters are evidently able to converse at normal volume. Sherry Garland’s Silent Storm (1993) is a more compelling fictional account of the hurricane. (Fiction. 10-13)