"Walk Through Fire" by Yasmine S. Ali, MD

This is a book about the 1978 Waverly train disaster, which with 98% certainty you didn't know about before reading this article. (Or before I told you, if you're my mom.) Basically, a train derailed in the middle of the town of Waverly, Tenessee. Then, two days later, a tank car full of petroleum exploded and swamped the local hospital in burn victims.

This book is honestly very well-written, for all that it tells the story fairly non-linearly (e.g. starting with something in one chapter and going back to the life and times of someone random in the next chapter). It all ties together around 2/3 of the way through the book, when the tank car exploded. The author has a way with words that makes the random snippets of seemingly unrelated people interesting enough that readers (read: me) don't get bored and DNF the book.

Also, it's written by the daughter of the head surgeon at the hospital that got swamped in burn victims. I didn't realize that until I'd finished the book and got to the author bio at the back.

Were this a videogame, its subject matter would get rated: M for graphic violence.

However, the book handles it in a way that's more: T15+ for matter-of-fact descriptions of things like people getting their skin burned off.

4 stars. It's almost good enough to get 5, but not quite.

 

(Endnote: Our library has a display called "Learn Something New and Oddly Specific", which is where I found this book and that book about heart surgery that's currently languishing in an unfinished mini-review collection. I keep telling the librarians it's a great idea in hopes that they'll keep it around for longer.)