![]() ![]() She scrambles out of the water with injuries that will threaten her life in the days to come. ![]() When the tornado hits, Dovey is blown from her home to Gum Pond. Gwin does this with such detail, with an eye that’s unwavering even as townspeople are run through with clothes hangers or fall into craters created with century-old trees that are yanked from the ground. With the family in place, it was time to chronicle the storm. Her husband Virgil worked in the cotton mill, and their granddaughter Dreama cared for her baby, a boy named Promise. ![]() Dovey, the matriarch, made a living as a laundress. That omission fueled her research, as she gathered old newspaper articles, conducted interviews, and finally penned this fictional account of one family, the Grand’hommes. She discovered that members of the African-American community, who made up a third of the town’s population, were not counted among the dead or injured. As author Minrose Gwin, who grew up in her grandparents’ house in Tupelo, studied the tragedy, another story surfaced. Those are the facts of Promise, a novel based on that devastating twister. When the death toll was tallied, the number reached as high as 233, with another 1,000 injured. ![]() The storm leveled half the town, tearing apart forty-eight city blocks, sending several children flying through the air. On April 5, 1936, a tornado with winds estimated as high as 318 mph, fractured Tupelo, Mississippi. ![]()
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