Out of the Wind 22 mai: Joplin, Missouri

It is a warm spring day. Graduation just ended. Then suddenly, This is a tornado warning, in effect for Jasper and Newton Counties…

It’s May 22, 2011. The deadliest, most damaging tornado in 50 years is about to tear into Joplin, Missouri.

Written from multiple points of view, D. Ed. Hoggatt’s novel will tug at the reader’s emotions and spirit. Join Carly, Madison, Hailey, Mark, and William as they discover what comes out of the wind of a destructive storm.

This title and others are also available on Kindle from Amazon.

From the Author:

It may be possible that no one can effectively relate what it is like to be inside the wind of an EF5 tornado. Authors have tried it. Reporters have inquired about it. Even movies have attempted to put us directly in the line of such a storm. All have failed. Perhaps that is why I chose not to title my book Inside the Wind.

I recently came to the realization that Joplin's tornado of May 22, 2011, is prologue to the real story. The storm is not the climax; it is the starting point. Regardless, I still attempted to portray the Joplin storm as it happens. Again, there is no way to adequately describe, in words or pictures, what the storm really looked, sounded, and felt like. There really is no way to understand the fear, anxiety, and uncertainty that comes in the immediate hours with debris still fluttering from the sky and the rumble still ringing in our ears.

That part is still in Out of the Wind, but that part is just the beginning. Joplin's story unfolds in the aftermath. Joplin's story is revealed in the days and weeks after the storm. If the tornado is the main character, then the main character in this story dies in the first pages. In Out of the Wind, the tornado is not the nemesis, the antagonist, or the monster. The real monster appears in the guise of the emotions and relationships of the human characters.