"For those few who still remember, the images are seared into their
brains: the corpses floating down Main Street; the boats that drifted
into the living rooms of flooded houses; the dead dogs and featherless
chickens; the muck and fish stink; the moonscape of flattened houses;
the residue of the last great hurricane to hit Long Island, the storm of
1938. " - The New York Times
This is a story of that day - a day that began much like any other day
at the ragtag end of the summer season on the eastern end of Long
Island - better known as The Hamptons. The storm came without warning
landing at three in the afternoon bringing with it unprecedented wind
and rain and waves so high and powerful they were recorded on
seismographs 5000 miles away in Alaska.
But A DAY LIKE ANY OTHER is not just a hurricane novel. The storm is a
framing device for an historical tableau vivant of this near mythical
place - The Hamptons - brought to life via the stories of townspeople,
the wealthy summer colony, the fishing folk and the art crowd. Written
by a natural tale-spinner and masterful portraitist of character and
place, it does have one wild, furious storm at its center - an historic
tempest that wreaked havoc on the little towns and villages that line
the ocean front of the South Fork of Long Island.
Could it happen again? Yes - it will almost certainly happen again and
no matter how many moguls build seaside monuments defying the odds,
another hurricane like 1938 will surely be the deadliest in American
history.
