The Sinking Of The Eastland: America's Forgotten Tragedy

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Summary: A MARVELOUS WORK
Review: I have long been a fan of great Chicago writers and great Chicago stories. While still in college, I discovered the immortal Nelson Algren, and James T. Farrell and James M. Cain and Studs Terkel, and recently found another good Chicago yarn in Devil in The White City. Jay Bonansinga holds up his end of the legacy quite well. A novelist of considerable talent and originality (The Killer's Game, Oblivion, The Sleep Police), Bonansinga seems to have all the skills. In Oblivion, he hooks us from Word One: "I'm twenty-nine years old, and I'm less than two years out of seminary school, and I'm watching my life piss away before my eyes." In the Killer's Game, while painting a vivid portrait of an almost supernaturally gifted assassin, he shows us the hollowness and moral bankruptcy of a predatory life. Here, in Eastland, Bonansinga does indeed open our eyes to America's Forgotten Tragedy. On a perfect day with perfect expectations of food and friends and dancing, more than 800 people suddenly loose their lives under the most horrific circumstances. The difference between average writers and wonderful writers is that the latter see the big picture. Bonansinga sees a tragedy waiting to happen, a callous commercial interest that will do anything to mask the warning signs, squeeze a few extra nickels out of the general purse, with the tension mounting and the tragedy approaching so that the Eastland's owners are practically picking the pockets of the walking dead. Then you see the cowardly passengers, hearty young men in their tailored finery, trampling women and children to save their scrawny lives. And ordinary citizens, with no interest in the outcome other than a deep rooted sense of morality and community, rushing to the disaster and risking their lives to pull hysterical victims from the water. And where would a tragedy be without politicians and spin doctors, rushing to the site to put the best face on the tragedy, promising vigorous investigations and sweeping change and the harshest of fates for the perpetrators? Eastland is horrifying, sickening, eye-opening and engrossing. Chalk up another wonderful effort for another blue-collar wordsmith from Chicago: in the end, Eastland is a ripping good yarn that paints a marvelous portrait of an event that virtually none of us would have grapsed without the impassioned effort of Jay Bonansinga. James Dalessandro, author, Bohemian Heart, Citizen Jane, 1906

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Summary: Moving. Compelling. A captiving tribute to the victims.
Review: Jay Bonansinga has painted a picture of The Eastland Disaster that pulls the reader right into the boat, the river, and the morgue. Unlike the very dry and overly statistical book that was previously written on this subject, this book introduces you to many of the real people who were on that boat that tragic day. You feel and smell the moment right along with them. You really care about each passenger as a human, not just a reported number or statistic. You mourn with the mothers, widows, widowers and entire families that were devastated by this accident. I was so drawn into the drama because of my caring for the chosen characters. What amazing stories of survival and valore, intense moments of suffering and defeat. The legal aftermath was almost as shocking as the disaster itself. Why were these precious lives disrepected and left for forgotten until now. I was amazed at how little publicity this event has gotten over the decades and I, for one, feel like I have paid my due respects to the victims and their loved ones through Bonansinga's compelling account. Bravo! This is the way non-fiction was meant to be written.

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Summary: Great Fiction, Confused Facts
Review: This is dramatic yarnspinning about Chicago's urban ship wreck that gives a human side to George Hilton's encyclopedic Eastland; Legacy of the Titanic. This cinematic version even uses some fictional techniques to explain of the unknowns of the story-such as the enigmatic actions of the captain.

However, the author sometimes cuts too much to the chase--such as removing the ship's happy six year career on Lake Erie. Readers of George Hilton may wonder that the famous near capsize outside of South Haven has been moved to Chicago Harbor" (page 45). Then he says that the Eastland trial was in a "Chicago federal court building" (page 222) rather than Grand Rapids.

The author reveals himself as a landsman with a few nautical word problems. The word comandeer (p. 210) does not mean to hire. Eastland while snug at her dock (page 28) was not "yawing" nor "pitching." And he creates a miracle (page 29) where people "trekked across the lake." He says that USS Wilmette had a main battery of four 50 caliber guns (page 232), but Hilton's photos show large caliber guns. Bonansinga says (page 223) that "... Hilton methodically proved that the true reason that the ship went over was...a glut of lifeboats." But Professor Hilton honestly shows this reason to be just a theory, as he shows on his opening pages and in his math.

This exciting retelling should make a fine film--and perhaps inspire even more research into this complex and tragic event.