On the night of September 20, 1938, the news on the radio was full of Hitler’s pending invasion of Czechoslovakia. In a matter of hours, however, a hurricane of unprecedented force would tear through one of the wealthiest and most populated stretches of coastline in America, obliterating communities from Long Island to Providence, destroying entire fishing fleets from Montauk to Narragansett Bay, and leaving seven hundred people dead.

Using newspaper reports, survivor testimony, and archival sources, Cherie Burns reconstructs this harrowing day and the amazing tales of heroism, survival, and loss that occurred. Those who survived still remember the Great Hurricane as the most terrifying moment of their lives. Burns’s masterful storytelling follows the storm’s monstrous path and preserves for posterity the way the Great Hurricane changed New England forever.