The eruption of Mount Pelée on the Caribbean island of Martinique in the spring of 1902 destroyed the entire French West Indies city of St. Pierre. A hundred years later, natural disaster buff Zebrowksi (Perils of a Restless Planet) has pulled together enough records to create a subtle though gripping account that combines powerful human drama (and tragedy) with a well-documented report of catastrophe in paradise. His account dwells on how easily the French bureaucratic order buckled—like Walter Lord's A Night To Remember
cast on an island fixed in a sea of cataclysms over the Atlantic Tectonic Plate. And like the Titanic
disaster, this one came at just the moment when science (early seismometers were in place on the island) and undersea cable communications seemed capable of defending cities against forces of nature. Both St. Vincent's and Martinique suffered major volcanic eruptions in succession in April and May, but Zembrowski's premise—that the colonial infrastructure of St. Pierre could have got many of the 30,000 who died out of the second volcano's way—is somehow swept away by his own storytelling powers (his re-creation of the island governor's last cabinet meeting, for example). He is nearly as good as McPhee (Annals of the Former World) at making the earth move under the reader, and schadenfreude
fans and historical disaster buffs will enjoy this one—while perhaps in Paris some bureaucrat may yet be called to account. Illus.
(Jan.)
