This is a touching and very honest memoir of how Donna and her dog Edie survived the Joplin Tornado, including photographs of the damage that make the scale of the tornado painfully clear.

I came to this rather cynically, having had far too many Katrina cash-in stories offered for review, but it laid my fears to rest early.

While there are some examples of text speak (thru instead of through) and typos like down turn as two words, they are easy to overlook. Donna describes the situation plainly and without embellishment, but literary flourishes would have detracted. It makes more of an impression as Donna matter-of-factly describes going into shock outside the remains of her house, and the family of ‘angels’ who gave her a lift.

One area where it stands out from many memoirs of this type is the author’s focus on how many people came together to help out in the aftermath, the description of various companies banding together to help the Red Cross and Humane Society with the displaced and newly homeless. It details the good that people did, rather than focusing entirely on looters and panic as many authors would.

This is possibly a spoiler, but the afterword about Edie will break the heart of any pet owners. She was eleven at the time of the tornado, so elderly for a large-breed dog, but I still feel for the author.

This is the type of book that makes me hate rating systems, because for Joplin survivors, those who know the area, and those who are trying to learn about the Tornado, as a survivor’s first hand account it is an instant must-read. Rating it as something to read for entertainment seems morbid, however readers of real-life survival stories should pick this up.