Product Description
26" X 26 1/2" folded map from 1931 ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

best of the series!
I'm not a fan of the series but this one is great. I read hurricane{boring} and attempted titanic [to boring to finish] but this was great! Max is a future lion tamer and jodi used to walk the highwire. {her mom was injured badly when she fell off one and she can't find the will to go back on} when the train crashes they escape alive but it might have been better they did'nt with what they are going to face.

COOLEST!!!!
These books are way awesome. They are so real and lifelike you feel like you are there. And they way they put fictional characters in famous or every day disaters isvery intriguing. Duey and Bale had better keepwriting these because no one wants to lose a good thing.

da' da' da' bbbbbbooooommmmbbbbb
Now I would like the world to know that everyone who likes to read should be reading these books.These books are da' best in da' world. I've read every single one of them and they got my 2 thumbs and five stars.Karenand Kathleen better be able to hear this, they also get my two thumbs upand my five stars. Keep writin'.The next book should be #12 Tornado, #13Tsunami, and #14 Avalanche.

Train Wreck is another great Survival! book.
Maximo Reyes is a Mexican orphan who joined a travelling circus and hopes to become a lion tamer. Thirteen year old Jodi Jamison and her father are performers in the same circus. Jodi used to be a high wire walker, but eversince her mother was badly injured after a fall last year, Jodi has losther nerve. When their train wrecks one stormy night, both Max and Jodi mustface their worst fears if they can even begin to hope to live through themost dangerous night of their young lives. I highly reccomend this book,along with the other Survival! books by Kathleen Duey and Karen A. Bale. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (11)

enjoyable read
This book works on many levels.It works as a mystery and as a story for anyone who has ever had to meet new in-laws and older friends of their new spouse.

Kansas troubles
I enjoyed this book it reels you in as if you are a part of the characters. Definetly recomend the series to all mystery readers.

Excellent!
This was my first Benni Harper book and I loved it!I will admit, though, I got to meet a lot of people in my next book since this one didn't have any of the major secondary characters. I love the dynamics of the Benni/Gabe relationship and how real it is!

Kansas, Quilts and Murder
Benni Harper and her new husband, Gabe Ortiz leave California for a vacation in Kansas so that Benni can meet Gabe's family and old friends. The experience is stressful for Benni because she knows very little of Gabe's background or former life.As usual, Gabe is not into explaining things to Benni and they are constantly locking horns in between their flirting.Gabe's sister shares Benni's love of quilts and asks for her help in setting up a local quilt show. In the mean time, the murder of a young woman singer named Tyler takes place. She happened to be dating Gabe's old friend Rob and he is a suspect in her death. Tyler was also a runaway wife from the local Amish community and a superb quilter. When Benni sees the last quilt that Tyler made, she discovers some clues that could lead to the identity of the killer.

There's a lot offascinating "quilt talk" in this book and some interesting facts about the state of Kansas. This is the third book in the Benni Harper series and I'm now committed to reading them all.

Going home is never easy...
Many people dread their first meeting with their new in-laws, it does not help that Benni and Gabe married after only knowing each other 3 months nor that Benni insists on keeping her last name (that of her dead husband) instead of taking Gabes.Meeting Gabe's family is hard enough, but after the murder of a beautiful young singer, Tyler Brown, Benni finds herself deep in a murder mystery where her husband's best friends are all prime suspects.She and Gabe struggle to find their footing in their marriage which seemed so right in California but under the scrutiny of his family seems ill advised.Discovering Tyler's true background as an Amish wife who has fled the community resulting in banishment from her family is startling.How did her life with the "English" lead to her death?Bennie is thrust into danger as she gets closer and closer to identifying the murderer.Will Gabe be able to protect her?Ms. Fowler's writing is fast paced and the story moves well.I did think there were a few loose ends in the story but nothing that will keep me from reading the rest of the Benni Harper mysteries.They are currently all on the top of my reading list.I love all the characters and enjoy seeing them fleshed out in each of the books, they have depth and multi-layers to them which I really like.Gramma Dove is an absolute hoot! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

A Sobering Reminder
This is a good solid historical account.Well documented and relentless in the telling of the story.It was another reminder for me of the intensity of the oppression of the American southern blacks before and after the Civil War.Once Reconstruction was effectively ended in 1876, the black people of the South were abandoned by the politicians of the North and left to the tender mercies of the southern planters and their hired help.

The Exoduster movement involved the movement of approximately 6,000 southern blacks from the South to Kansas starting around 1876 and peaking in 1879.It was a reaction to the terrorism used by the planter class and the white authorities of that time to keep the blacks in their place politically andeconomically.The fact that blacks outnumbered the white planter class and their minions in parts of the South meant that "appropriate methods" needed to be used by these same people to prevent the black populace from voting.

A story worth telling and well told by the author.It is a well documented and footnoted book.The book pays homage to the courageous spirit of the Exodusters, but also provides a reality check against those that would have us conveniently forget terrible injustices in our history.

Something to remember as we go forward in our grand national adventures in this year of our Lord, 2007.

Where are the voices of the 'Dusters?
The migration of the Exodusters, blacks who moved to Kansas searching for a place in whichto be truly free, is a massive and massively overlooked part of history.Nell Painter, in her book Exodusters: Black Migration to Kansas After Reconstruction, does a credible job of restoring this overlooked part of frontier history to the realm of academic discussion.It is a good book, yet, disturbingly, the voice of the Exodusters is missing. Painter claims that the exact number of Exodusters is unknown, but estimates from 6,000 to 20,000 have been made (184).Constrained by the prices gouged out of their harvests by tenant bosses, they dreamed of a land of milk and honey.This dream, in turn, with a small amount of exaggeration, helped to send them looking in Kansas for what they wanted.Yet, most of this book is about the conditions that led to the movement of the Exodusters and not what they found there, or how they adapted to life in a strange land.There are no reminiscences, no narratives, or stories from descendents.Painter points out the Southern credit system crushed them economically (55), that their schools were inferior (50) because of the practice of hiring deficient white teachers over exemplary black instructors, but there is no mention of whether or not change was achieved in Kansas.
Stylistically, Painter has the odd habit of taking end paragraphs to both sum up the previous chapter and introduce the next chapter.It breaks the flow of the book and makes it difficult to read.Also at times, Painter seems to be saying too much too fast.Some of her ideas, the study of black schools and the racial politics that controlled them, and the lineage of the black spiritual/political leaders for example, are books in themselves.
Early on, Painter posits that class was just as important as race in the history of the Exodusters (vii).Respectable African-Americans, that is those who agreed with the Anglos, who had been to white schools and spoke like the whites, came out against the Exoduster movement, and for the political party of the planter.Interestingly enough, in the discussion of class issues, Painter doesn't touch much on the poor whites and how they felt about the black movement to Kansas.For example, whether it became easier for them to find work and buy land.Painter is silent on this issue, other than mentioning that poor whites had at one point united with poor blacks in political clubs (39).
Painter argues that it was the enactment of certain rules that led to the Southern black's desire to leave the South.These rules forced black membership in "clubs" that obligated them to vote a Democratic party line, required passes to move around freely, and attempted to stop them for owning property.The well-known poll tax (37) is an example of these rules that were an attempt to control and curtail the political power of the African American.These rules led to stress and that stress bred a desire to move whether it be to Africa, to Kansas, or to Oklahoma to establish that territory as a black state (259).
Painter does a good job of portraying the changing of the Exoduster leadership from the un-educated but intelligent Henry Adams and the spiritual leader Pap Singleton, who saw the move to Kansas as one of Biblical import and spiritually motivated, to the classically Anglo-educated leaders who emerged in the beginning of the twentieth century.
In the first section of the book, Painter brings out the fact that for the first time since the Civil War, whites felt challenged by blacks.Many former slaves could read, they had bolstered their self-esteem through Army service in the war, they were older, wiser, able to buy property and the white planters, their former owners, were running scared (5).Painter spends a lot of time discussing the political machinations of the blacks and how the whites used political separation to help divide and conquer.The many different ways the wealthy whites attempted to stop the blacks from gaining power are detailed: "bulldozing", the terroristic activities by the KKK and groups like them, by disarming them, or out arming them by theft from government armories, and by stopping their attempts at cooperative ventures.
Although Painter does say that some whites "helped" the Blacks by warning them of bulldozing attacks, she claims that this was merely an attempt on the part of the whites to bolster their own opinion, making them feel better about themselves, and to disenfranchise the blacks by proving that they could not take care of themselves without the outside paternalistic influence of the Anglos (18).
Part Two of Exodusters involves the big figures of the movement, Henry Adams and Pap Singleton, a man who saw himself as the sole reason for Kansas immigration and that immigration as a holy obligation.These men helped lead the movement that casted around for a new black homeland.Cyprus, Liberia, and Kansas were all under consideration.All the factors that Painter had enumerated in the first part led to the desire and madness for moving that eventually landed tens of thousands of migrants in Kansas with no means of support and no free land as they had thought.
Painter details the different groups of Exodusters.The first came from Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi, and then later waves from the Gulf States.He discusses the political upheaval which this massive migration caused in both the states from which they were leaving and to the territory in which they would soon arrive. Rents suddenly dipped in the regions they had left, leading planters to promise safe-conduct and better treatment.This was a promise that many of the Exodusters treated warily and refused to accept (211).Finally, when reaction from the exodus had begun to set in, the South began to realize that it must change.Leading newspapers, for the first time, advocated the sale of property to blacks (240).Still though, many Exodusters didn't return.Painter's figure is that, "in early 1880 roughly fifteen thousand migrants still remained in Kansas" (256).
Painter points out that while the Kansas Fever Exodus was mad and rushed, with no central leadership and little thought given to actually making a living once arriving in Kansas, in contrast, later moves would be well-thought out and carefully planned.Yet all that careful planning did not keep the Exodusters and their saga alive in the minds of most Americans.It is especially tragic that because of the fact that the Exodusters were second class citizens, little if any of their accounts were recorded.It is America's loss as we attempt to come to terms with our national Western myth that we do not have more accounts like the Exodusters with which to work.

exellent
A very comprehensive look at the events precedeing and including Black migration from the South after the Civil War. A must read for anyone interested in Black history or the Civil War. ... Read more