Good Deeds presents the lovable nature of the imperfect family. Denise Gess successfully portrays the trials of an emotionally detached family attempting to deal with a recent loss. Taking you into the heart of Philly, Denise brilliantly depicts Dana, a stong-willed woman with an insatiable hunger to resolve the wrong that has been plaguing her family for years. I absolutely loved Dana's sardonic wit as well as the eccentric humor of Irv, her Jewish Zen Buddhist father. Good Deeds skillfully displays the reality of love, loss, and family. This is a truly excellent first novel.

The massive Tornado-whipped fire that engulfed the town of Preshtigo, Wisconsin, on October 8, 1871, was one of the deadliest natural disasters in American history, consuming perhaps as many as 2500 lives. And yet it is little remembered today because it occurred at the exact same time as another inferno was consuming the city of Chicago. While the Chicago fire may have wrought more impressive physical destruction, by comparison it was only one-tenth as deadly.

Authors Denise Gess and Willaim Lutz now recreate the history of the Preshtigo Fire for modern readers. They set the backdrop by telling a bit about the town before the fire and the people who inhabit it. Then they give accounts of the blaze through the eyes of those few who managed to survive. The descriptions of the blaze and particularly of its aftermath are unrelentingly gruesome and haunting. Gess and Lutz are fine writers. The book is well researched and highly readable. My only quibble is that at just over 220 pages of text it is a tad slight for a work of history.

Overall, "Firestorm at Preshtigo" is a haunting true life tale that should be of much appeal to history and disaster buffs.

A confluence of events occured on October 8,1871, in Peshtigo, Wisconsin, producing a catastrophe of epic proportions. Since the great Chicago fire occured the same day, the Peshtigo conflagration has been overlooked in American history, until now. Gess and Lutz, co-authors of "Firestorm at Peshtigo", have produced a graphic account drawn from survivors. The fire, fueled by dry conditions from a long drought and whipped into tremendous intensity by tornado-like winds, "moved faster than the time it takes to write these words."

The town was gone in less than an hour, reduced to ashes, with widespread, nearly instantaneous loss of life. This tale is not for the faint-hearted as Gess and Lutz pull no punches in describing the scenes of devastation. Since earlier fires had destroyed telegraph lines from the remote mining town, the rest of the nation learned little of the fate of Peshtigo, and the disaster there was overshadowed by the Chicago fire of the same date (and the boosterism and rebuilding of its aftermath). Gess and Lutz have restored a page of midwestern history in this engrossing book. Highly recommended.

The moment I picked this book up I couldn't put it down again. I felt the same way about THE HOT ZONE and INTO THIN AIR. It's a gripping account of an event every American should know about. In human terms the Peshtigo fire was the most destructive in our history, very like the Civil War was our most destructive war. Gess and Lutz tell this story in a way to make the reader feel like he or she is present as each moment unfolds. My senses were tuned to the taste and smell of the air and as events began to build I too began to wonder where I could find shelter. This was one of America's greatest tragedies but it would be a bigger tragedy if the victims and their story remain obscure. These people deserve the same attention from us as the victims of 9-11. And one more thought. There are monsterous fires in the news every day. They remind us that nature can overpower our most heroic efforts. This account of Pestigo can to a degree
teach us things we need to prevent it from happening again.