Flooded: Requiem for Johnstown by Ann E. Burg (review)

Burg, Ann E. Flooded: Requiem for Johnstown. Scholastic, 2020 [336p] Trade ed. ISBN 9781338540697 $18.99 Reviewed from digital galleys R Gr. 5-10

While the year-round residents of Johnstown, Pennsylvania work at the mill and run their shops and tend to their lives, a cadre of rich business barons pops in at the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, a members-only lake retreat high above the town. The lake depends on the dam, and the dam requires maintenance, but the members know little and care less about the dam they have variously altered and neglected under their ownership. Tragedy strikes in May of 1889, when a strong rain finally overpowers the dam and empties the lake into Johnstown. Burg's verse novel is divided into three parts: the first, establishing background through voices of Johnstown children and young adults; the second, following their experiences during the height of the flood; third, exploring the aftermath—assigning blame, seeking justice, rebuilding lives. Burg ably conducts players and readers through a suite of emotions, from the slightly ruffled normalcy of family and school concerns, through the terror of the flood, and onto the frustration and outrage of working-class plaintiffs bringing well-heeled defendants to court. Burg uses identities of actual Johnstowners and, in a chillingly effective literary play, switches the names of deceased characters to their morgue tag numbers and grays out the font as they continue to speak after death. Readers who demand insight into the balance of fiction and fact will do well to read Burg's concluding notes, which comment on her commingling of fictional and researched characterization. This is a worthy companion to similarly voiced novels: Richards' Three Rivers Rising (BCCB 5/10) on the Johnstown Flood, as well as Wiechman's Not on Fifth Street (BCCB 12/17) on the 1937 Ohio River Flood.