The Circus Fire: A True Story of an American Tragedy

by Stewart O'Nan Narrated by Dick Hill

Overview

“An extraordinary book. O'Nan is amazing in his handling of the abundance of facts, rumors and legends that have built up around this fire.” -USA Today

It was a midsummer afternoon, halfway through a Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus performance, when the big top caught fire. The tent had been waterproofed with a mixture of paraffin and gasoline; in seconds it was burning out of control. More than 8,000 people were trapped inside, and the ensuing disaster would eventually take 167 lives.

Stewart O'Nan brings all his narrative gifts to bear on this gripping account of the great Hartford circus fire of 1944. Drawing on interviews with hundreds of survivors, O'Nan skillfully re-creates the horrific events and illuminates the psychological oddities of human behavior under stress: the mad scramble for the exits; the perilous effort to maneuver animals out of danger; the hero who tossed dozens of children to safety before being trampled to death. Brilliantly constructed and exceptionally moving, The Circus Fire is history at its most compelling.

“A profound remembering of the fire, its victims, its survivors, and its legacy.” -The Boston Globe

“[O'Nan's nonfiction] is as accomplished as his fiction...as gripping as any thriller.” -The Seattle Times

Editorial Reviews

Ann Stephenson

Stewart O'Nan is amazing in his handling of the abundance of facts, rumors and legends that have built up around this fire in the years since it occurred. The author of several fine novels...this is his first work of non-fiction he shows here a journalist's restraint, using poetic description at only choice moments.

You can't ask for a more dramatic story, and Stewart O'Nan captures it all in an extraodinary book, Circus Fire
— USA Today

Michelle Phillips

With thrilling precision, O'Nan deftly describes the events leasing up to and during the fire...Accompanying O'Nan's superb writing are archival photographs, which add a visceral impact to the story.
—Time Out New York

Edward Hoagland

[O'Nan's] lavish documentation (which so often reads as if he were a newspaperman on the scene, phoning in as many facts and impressions as possible) suggests a larger theme. Perhaps the circumscribed horror of a circus fire -- of fun gone wrong -- will typify not the old century but the new one, in which we may suffer a pox of isolated catastrophes rather than a few gigantic worldwide conflagrations. In capturing them, a writer of manifold talents like Stewart O'Nan ought to prosper.
—The New York Times Book Review

Kirkus Reviews

Agonizing hour-by-hour retelling of the worst American circus disaster and its aftermath, seen with a restless, unflinching eye for the details—touching, ironic, and depraved. "The fire was the size of a baseball, a football, a basketball, a dishpan, a briefcase, a small window, half a tablecloth. . . . One thing people agreed on was that it was small." How the blaze started on July 6, 1944, in Hartford, Connecticut, remains unknown. At least 167 people died, and several thousand were injured. The resulting bad publicity (and nearly $5 million in civil judgments) not only pushed Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey's into receivership, it eventually forced the Greatest Show on Earth to discard its sideshow and abandon the outdoor "big top" for the gloomy (but fireproof) confines of concrete sports arenas. For novelist O'Nan (A Prayer for the Dying, 1999, etc.), the event is a small-town tragedy that grew quickly into a national scandal: the show business equivalent of the sinking of the Titanic, inspiring works of fact and fiction and setting off a nationwide hunt for a crazed arsonist, 25 years of courtroom battles, thousands of dollars in donated funds for survivors, and mountains of sensationalist journalism. O'Nan finds epic pathos in the heroics of common individuals and circus performers (clown Emmet Kelly and the Flying Wallendas among them), the bellowing of doomed animals, the panic of the mob, the shameless buck-passing of local officials, and the disgraceful efforts of circus staff to avoid responsibility. Fortunately, co-owner Robert Ringling's fatuous claim that his paraffin-coated tent could not be fireproofed during wartimewithoutmilitary approval did not sway a Connecticut judge from fining the circus $10,000 and convicting (and imprisoning) five circus staffers for involuntary manslaughter. O'Nan alleviates his gripping, tragic story with wry glances at circus history and its better-known personalities and performers, as well as interviews with numerous survivors whose lives the fire changed (not always for the worst). (96 photos and illustrations)

From the Publisher

A triumph of literary storytelling.”–The Cleveland Plain Dealer

“An extraordinary book. O’Nan is amazing in his handling of the abundance of fact, rumors and legends that have built up around this fire.”–USA Today

“[O’Nan’s]non-fiction is as accomplished as his fiction.... [The Circus Fire is] as gripping as any thriller.”–The Seattle Times

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169582819
Publisher:	Brilliance Audio
Publication date:	05/16/2017
Edition description:	Unabridged

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