Hurricane

September 21, 1938. New Englanders are going about their normal lives. The school bus in Jamestown RI runs its normal route. Ensign Parker Hickey rides the Bostonian train across the Connecticut coast. His estranged sisters Lucy and Minnie get ready for work in Westerly RI.

At the US Weather Bureau in Washington, junior forecaster Charlie Pearson forecasts a fast-moving Atlantic hurricane will strike Long Island, Connecticut, and Rhode Island in a matter of hours. But experience trumps science when senior forecaster Mitchell dismisses Pearson’s forecast and refuses to issue a hurricane warning. “New England does not have hurricanes.”

Life had not been easy for the Hickey siblings, ever since the accidental drowning of their kid brother ten years earlier. A tragedy that ultimately destroyed the family. Parker has not spoken to his sisters in five years.

The hurricane comes ashore, wreaks havoc, extreme property damage, extensive loss of life.

The Bostonian is battered. Passengers panic. Sylvia Pritchard jumps from the stalled train. She is about to drown when Parker rescues her.

Later, to save the train and it’s passengers, Parker steps up to help decouple the train from derailed cars. This triggers a flashback to the trauma of his brother’s drowning.

When the storm sweeps away the beach house of the wealthy Taylor family, Lucy Hickey, their maid saves the life of Althea Taylor, the wife of her boss and lover Duncan Taylor.

As a first responder, Minnie Hickey rescues a young boy from a raging river. An act of courage that helps her resolve the guilt she feels about her brother’s death.

The children on the Jamestown school bus are sadly swept away by a tidal wave.

The storm passes. Lives are lost. Lives are changed.

Their beach house gone; the Taylor family rides across the bay on a section of a bathroom floor to an island in Connecticut.

Poor Lucy does not survive.

Parker and Sylvia make plans to see each other again.

Minnie and Parker reconcile.

Despite the death and destruction, hope is not lost.