The Circus Fire: A True Story of an American Tragedy

by Stewart O'Nan, Alice Van Straalen (Editor)

Overview

The acclaimed author of A Prayer for the Dying brings all his narrative gifts to bear on this gripping account of tragedy and heroism—the great Hartford circus fire of 1944.

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.

Steward 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780385496858
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	06/12/2001
Edition description:	1 ANCHOR
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	74,327
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 8.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Stewart O'Nan is the author of fifteen previous novels, including West of Sunset, The Odds, Emily Alone, Songs for the Missing, Last Night at the Lobster, A Prayer for the Dying, and Snow Angels. His 2007, novel Last Night at the Lobster, was a national bestseller and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. He was born and raised in Pittsburgh, where he lives with his family.

Hometown:

Avon, CT

Date of Birth:

February 4, 1961

Place of Birth:

Pittsburgh, PA

Education:

B.S., Aerospace Engineering, Boston University, 1983; M.F.A., Cornell University, 1992

Website:

http://www.stewart-onan.com

Table of Contents

	Foreword	xi
	Cleveland, 1942	1
	July 4, 1944	19
	Principals	24
	July 5, 1944	25
	July 6, 1944	37
	Circus Day	39
	Showtime	48
	The Point of Origin	68
	Our Boys in Uniform	73
	Blue Sky	78
	Animal Acts	82
	The Bravest Girl I've Ever Seen	86
	This Ain't No Time to Faint, Lady	91
	Don't Look Back	95
	The Stars and Stripes Forever	100
	Ten More Bars!	105
	Death by Fire	109
	Alive, Alive, Alive	114
	Have You Seen Him?	119
	Bringing Out the Dead	127
	Triage	131
	Unexpected Guests	137
	Extra, Extra	143
	We Can't Reach You, Hartford	147
	A G.I. Party	153
	The Names of the Dead	160
	Bad Face	174
	Evidence	180
	In the Evening, Sun Is Going Down	186
	Go to Sleep	188
	Bad News	195
	Were You in Cleveland?	199
	All Through the Night	204
	And on Till Morning	205
	July 7, 1944	213
	July 8, 1944	229
	July 9, 1944	239
	July 10, 1944	243
	July 11-July 15, 1944	251
	July 15-July 31, 1944	261
	August-December, 1944	273
	1945	289
	1946-1950	303
	1950	313
	1950-1990	329
	1990-1991	343
	1991-1999	355
	Acknowledgments	365

What People are Saying About This

Rick Bragg

The Circus Fire is terrifying, compelling, and absolutely readable—because it is real. It happened in 1944, but Stewart O'Nan brings it to life again, along with its heroes and villains, and makes you feel like you are inside the big top as it starts to burn.

Rick Bass

Rick Bass

Taught and loving, this book strains to the heart's outer limits. The Circus Fire is journalism in the service of literature, literature in the service of history.

Jim Foster

A superbly written and absorbing book, admirably documented. This is a candid picture of humans at their best and their worst, and deserves a place on the shelves of any serious student of the American circus.
—(Jim Foster, editor, The White Tops, official publication of the Circus Fan Association of America)

Editorial Reviews

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

From the Publisher

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

Ann Stephenson

To quote KLIATT's Nov. 2000 review of the Brilliance audiobook edition: For stark human drama, this excellent, emotionally draining, vivid yet sensitive account of one of the most catastrophic accidents in American circus history... will be hard to beat. A fire of undetermined origin broke out in the Big Top of the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus during the July 6, 1944 matinee in Hartford, CT. The fire and the ensuing panic resulted in the deaths of 167 people and left many questions that have never been satisfactorily answered. The author begins by discussing previous circus fires and then sets the scene for the Hartford disaster...This story will send circus buffs and students of the human tragedy genre to the Internet and/or the library to find out more about this catastrophe. Excellent, but not for the overly sensitive. KLIATT Codes: SA—Recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 2000, Random House, Anchor, 370p. illus., $14.00. Ages 16 to adult. Reviewer: Prof. John E. Boyd; Jenkintown, PA , September 2001 (Vol. 35 No. 5)

KLIATT

In 1944, in Hartford, CT, the big top of Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus caught fire and burned to the ground in minutes. A capacity crowd of 10,000 was inside; many never got out. O'Nan takes us meticulously from the few stops before the setting up of the tent at the fatal site to the activities of some of the players into the 1990s. We encounter dozens of characters: people who almost went to the circus that day, families who did, along with the officials, investigators, and suspects. The cause of the inferno was never explained satisfactorily, but most observers eventually concluded that it was arson, and one unbalanced suspect seems the most likely candidate. The author devotes many words to horrible descriptions of injuries suffered--this is not a work for the squeamish. Interplay among the officials of the Ringling family is depicted, along with the political reaction to the disaster. Dick Hill's basic American intonations fit right in with this story; his approach is fairly emotionless here, and it works because the subject matter is so ghastly. A good selection for nonfiction collections.--Don Wismer, Cary Memorial Lib., Wayne, ME Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

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

Michelle Phillips

[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

Edward Hoagland

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)

Kirkus Reviews