F5: Devastation, Survival, and the most Violent Tornado Outbreak of the Twentieth Century

F5: DEVASTATION, SURVIVAL, AND THE MOST VIOLENT TORNADO OUTBREAK OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY; Mark Levine; New York: Hyperion, 2007; Nonfiction; 307pp.

Heavy Weather junkies (you know who you are) will be glad to get their hands on Mark Levine's book about the greatest tornado outbreak in the twentieth century which occurred on April 3-4, 1974. Tension boils up like thunderheads on a hot summer's day in Limestone County, Alabama, where we become acquainted with the folks whose lives will be unmade by tornado after tornado dropping from black skies later that day and into the night. We know what is coming--they don't. Levine's narrative teeters on the verge of melodrama, but rarely tips over, making his book a terrifying and heartbreaking story of sudden death and unimaginable destruction. Levine interrupts the narrative a couple of times with philosophical, political, and sociological musings that might profitably be skipped, but F5 is otherwise a gripper and a half.

LW