"This is what happened."
Description:
"By the time she dies at age 106, Esther Gottesfeld, the last survivor of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist fire, has told the story of that days many times. But her own role remains mysterious: How did she survive when at least 146 workers, her sister and fiancé among them, burned or jumped to their deaths? Are the gaps in her story just common mistakes, or has she deliberately concealed a secret over the years? As her granddaughter seeks the real story in the present day, a zealous feminist historian intrudes with her own set of conclusions, but it is Esther's voice echoing insistently through the decades that ultimately reveals the meaning of the tragedy.
A brilliant, haunting chronicle of the event that stood for ninety years as New York's most violent disaster, Triangle forces us to consider how we tell our stories, how we hear them, and how history is forged from unverifiable truths." -- from the back cover
My thoughts:
This was a very good book about people and their stories. The ones they tell, and the ones told about them. I liked Esther's interactions with the interviewer as well as her granddaughter's friend George Bostwick composing music based on DNA.
Date read: 12/29/2012
Book #: 43
Challenge: Off the Shelf Challenge 2012
Rating: 3*/5 = good
Genre: Fiction
ISBN-10: 0312426143
ISBN-13: 9780312426149
Publisher: Picador
Year: 2006
# of pages: 242
Binding: Trade Paperback
LibraryThing page
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