Official Review: Journeys to the Brink of Doom: True Sto...
-
lemming
- Posts: 67
- Joined: 26 Nov 2013, 21:03
- Bookshelf Size: 3
- Reviewer Page: onlinebookclub.org/reviews/by-lemming.html
- Latest Review: "Broken Land, A Brooklyn Tale" by John Biscello
Official Review: Journeys to the Brink of Doom: True Sto...
[Following is the official OnlineBookClub.org review of "Journeys to the Brink of Doom: True Stories of Disaster, Mystery, and Heroism at Niagara Falls" by T. W. Kriner.]
Share This Review
I've heard it said that good nonfiction is harder to write than good fiction. Maybe that's because nonfiction requires the writer to create a story from the chaos of reality. But much of this book is a truth dump about accidents, suicides, rescues, murders and attempted faked deaths at Niagara Falls with little attempt at suspense or commentary; the neutrality of most of the writing had me feeling I was reading a long Wikipedia article. This is a shame because the writer does demonstrate storytelling prowess at times.
He uses evocative chapter titles like "So beautiful a death" and "The deadline and the demon". He points out the contrast between a man who rescued a suicidal drunk at Niagara falls and a more famous person who shares his name - Kevorkian. He describes the rescue of an escaped mental patient who tries to end his life at the Falls, his rescuers feeling if they hadn't been trying to save him they would have liked to shoot him.
Some of the descriptions show a decent imagination, like the image of the demon Tawiskaro who native American legends say is behind the deaths at the Falls: "A chieftain of Death, he sits on a throne fashioned of boat hulls, with the flotsam of centuries heaped about him." And there are some good metaphors: "Any hope of his survival evaporated under the July sun."
For a self-published book there are few typos, and Kriner acknowledges he had multiple people read his manuscripts. It shows, notwithstanding occasional awkward sentences such as the description of a victim of the Falls "loosing his hold", or the author's statement that a quotation "offers hope for those who die here unwillingly" - they're dead so probably beyond being cheered up by quotations.
But the author has put serious effort into this book, and if I were a student working on an assignment about the Falls I might feel I'd struck gold of so many relevant facts and figures in one book. As a casual reader, however, I wanted this book to have a deeper point than the deadliness of the Falls. I wanted a sense of how the writer became obsessed with the place and found himself spending long hours researching at the Niagara Falls public library, requiring his wife's patience as he wrote the book, telling any friends who would listen stories of death and betrayal at the Falls.
I empathised with the writer's obsession when I read the chapter about the Vedder-Pearson mystery. Pearson, a once respected guy who has become a suicidal alcoholic is found dead on Luna Island in Niagara Falls, the clothes of his missing brother-in-law, Thomas Vedder, piled neatly near the body. Pearson was shot through the neck then through the brain stem, and a doctor believes he couldn't have inflicted the second wound himself. When Vedder's body is found in Luna Falls, there is no sign of a wound inflicted before he went in, but his will leaves more than half of his estate to Pearson's family, including the house they live in. Kriner offers a few maddeningly plausible hypotheses on the story behind the deaths of these two men, both of whom had motive to kill the other, and in that moment I shared the author's fascination with the Falls. Some of these stories are worthy of their own book.
Unfortunately, the writer soon goes back to telling stories that blur into one, because they follow the same formula: on such-and-such date, this person fell or jumped into the water and died, the end. And since I am not a student studying for an exam on deaths at the Falls, I went back to autopilot, checking the bottom of the screen in my ebook reader to see where I was in relation to the end. There is a worthwhile story to tell about the Falls, but this book often supplies only the raw materials from which a compelling story might have been constructed.
I rate this book two out of four stars.
***
Buy "Journeys to the Brink of Doom: True Stories of Disaster, Mystery, and Heroism at Niagara Falls" on Barnes and Noble
Share This Review
He uses evocative chapter titles like "So beautiful a death" and "The deadline and the demon". He points out the contrast between a man who rescued a suicidal drunk at Niagara falls and a more famous person who shares his name - Kevorkian. He describes the rescue of an escaped mental patient who tries to end his life at the Falls, his rescuers feeling if they hadn't been trying to save him they would have liked to shoot him.
Some of the descriptions show a decent imagination, like the image of the demon Tawiskaro who native American legends say is behind the deaths at the Falls: "A chieftain of Death, he sits on a throne fashioned of boat hulls, with the flotsam of centuries heaped about him." And there are some good metaphors: "Any hope of his survival evaporated under the July sun."
For a self-published book there are few typos, and Kriner acknowledges he had multiple people read his manuscripts. It shows, notwithstanding occasional awkward sentences such as the description of a victim of the Falls "loosing his hold", or the author's statement that a quotation "offers hope for those who die here unwillingly" - they're dead so probably beyond being cheered up by quotations.
But the author has put serious effort into this book, and if I were a student working on an assignment about the Falls I might feel I'd struck gold of so many relevant facts and figures in one book. As a casual reader, however, I wanted this book to have a deeper point than the deadliness of the Falls. I wanted a sense of how the writer became obsessed with the place and found himself spending long hours researching at the Niagara Falls public library, requiring his wife's patience as he wrote the book, telling any friends who would listen stories of death and betrayal at the Falls.
I empathised with the writer's obsession when I read the chapter about the Vedder-Pearson mystery. Pearson, a once respected guy who has become a suicidal alcoholic is found dead on Luna Island in Niagara Falls, the clothes of his missing brother-in-law, Thomas Vedder, piled neatly near the body. Pearson was shot through the neck then through the brain stem, and a doctor believes he couldn't have inflicted the second wound himself. When Vedder's body is found in Luna Falls, there is no sign of a wound inflicted before he went in, but his will leaves more than half of his estate to Pearson's family, including the house they live in. Kriner offers a few maddeningly plausible hypotheses on the story behind the deaths of these two men, both of whom had motive to kill the other, and in that moment I shared the author's fascination with the Falls. Some of these stories are worthy of their own book.
Unfortunately, the writer soon goes back to telling stories that blur into one, because they follow the same formula: on such-and-such date, this person fell or jumped into the water and died, the end. And since I am not a student studying for an exam on deaths at the Falls, I went back to autopilot, checking the bottom of the screen in my ebook reader to see where I was in relation to the end. There is a worthwhile story to tell about the Falls, but this book often supplies only the raw materials from which a compelling story might have been constructed.
I rate this book two out of four stars.
***
Buy "Journeys to the Brink of Doom: True Stories of Disaster, Mystery, and Heroism at Niagara Falls" on Barnes and Noble
Latest Review: "Broken Land, A Brooklyn Tale" by John Biscello
