To Sleep with the Angels: The Story of a Fire - Softcover

Cowan, David; Kuenster, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 156663217X ISBN 13: 9781566632171

Publisher: Ivan R. Dee, 1998

Synopsis

The story of one of the deadliest fires in American history that took the lives of ninety-two children and three nuns at a Catholic elementary school in Chicago. "An absorbing account. . .a tale of terror". -New York Times Book Review.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

On a grey winter day in December 1958, one of the deadliest fires in American history took the lives of ninety-two children and three nuns at a Catholic elementary school on Chicago's West Side. The blaze at Our Lady of the Angels School shocked the nation. It left many families physically and psychologically scarred for life, destroyed a close-knit working-class neighborhood, and sowed popular suspicion of the church hierarchy and city fathers. No one was ever prosecuted for setting the fire; to this day it remains an officially unsolved mystery. In To Sleep with the Angels, two veteran journalists tell the moving story of the fire and its consequences. David Cowan and John Kuenster have worked for years, talking with hundreds of sources and ferreting our documents to reconstruct a minute-by-minute narrative of the tragedy and the sorrows of its aftermath. It is a story of ordinary people caught up in a mind-numbing disaster. In gripping detail, the authors describe the fear, desperation, and panic that prevailed among children, teachers, firefighters, and parents in and around the stricken school building on that cold Monday afternoon. Beyond the flames, the story of the fire at Our Lady of the Angels became an enigma whose mystery has deepened with time: its cause was never officially explained despite evidence that it had been intentionally set by a troubled student at the school. The authors reveal for the first time this youngster's "confession" and the decision by a local judge not to pursue the case against him. The Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago also refused to press an investigation, preferring to label the fire a terrible "accident".

About the Author:

David Cowan has been a newspaper reporter in Illinois and is now a fireman and independent journalist who lives in the Chicago area. John Kuenster is executive editor of Century Publishing Company in Evanston, Illinois, and a former staff writer and columnist for the Chicago Daily News.

About this edition

• Publisher: Ivan R. Dee
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 156663217X
• ISBN 13: 9781566632171
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320