Word: mississippi
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Frederic assaulted the Bahamas, Alabama and Mississippi just two weeks after Hurricane David killed 1,200 people in the Dominican Republic, then spread destruction from Florida to Canada. Hugo was the fiercest storm to strike the U.S. East Coast since then. Last year, almost to the week, Gilbert, a maximum Category 5 hurricane with 175-m.p.h. winds, had howled along a more westerly course, pounding Jamaica before stomping into Mexico and the U.S. Gulf Coast...
...anyone, it was the back of this book which drew me in. (The front cover is incredibly ugly; don't let it deter you.) One of the best of English travel writers (who has also done some exploring of our America, in Old Glory, a fabulous journey down the Mississippi), Jonathan Raban, describes her earlier work as a "romance with America itself, its infinitely possible geography, its license, sexiness, and violence." The description clearly fits this new novel, and romance is a well-chosen word...
...Congress. It has already cleared the Senate and is awaiting consideration by a House-Senate conference committee. Notes Andy Kerr, conservation director of the Oregon Natural Resource Council: "The pressures on the politicians are tremendous. The Oregon delegation is having to deal with timber in l989 the way the Mississippi delegation had to deal with civil rights...
Those minority students who do arrive on campus feel isolated. A resurgence of bigotry has caused many to drop out. Last summer, for example, arsonists at the University of Mississippi torched the school's first on-campus black fraternity house; last spring four black women at Smith College received racist notes. In the face of such hostility, the inducements to enroll -- scholarships, minority-student organizations -- seem pale. "Overt racial incidents can have a real psychological effect, even if they don't happen to you," says John Jackson, 23, a black at the University of Texas at Austin...
McPhee's heroes are not content to go with the flow, be it the Mississippi River's wanton meanderings, the angry surge of molten rock from an Icelandic volcano, or the periodic slide of real estate in California's San Gabriel Mountains, where waterborne debris can roar down hillsides and turn million- dollar dream houses into nightmares for owners and insurance companies. McPhee's strength is the odd detail of natural disaster: "The house became buried to the eaves. Boulders sat on the roof. Thirteen automobiles were packed around the building, including five in the pool . . . The stuck horn...