Ashley Shelby recieved a degree in journalism from Indiana University and a Masters of Fine Arts in non-fiction writing from Columbia University. Her fiction has been awarded the William Faulkner Short Fiction Award. Shelby grew up in Minneapolis and now lives in New York, where she works in publishing and is the co-curator of the KGB Bar Nonfiction Reading Series.
From Publishers Weekly--Journalist Shelby applies the familiar
trope of public catastrophe as historical watershed to her study of
the record-breaking 1997 flood in Grand Forks, North Dakota, that
forced the evacuation of 50,000 residents and touched off
devastating fires after the Red River overtopped its dikes. The
event, she contends, bifurcated the town's sense of time into
"before the flood" and "after the flood," a division she honors in
the book. The first part is a lucid, sometimes gripping account of
the gathering disaster, explaining the freak weather patterns that
precipitated the inundation, the difficulties the National Weather
Service had in predicting the unprecedented scale of the flood, and
the desperate efforts of engineers to hold back the water. The
second part is a thorough micro-history of the aftermath, detailing
battles between flood victims and city officials over relief funds
and the effects of a new dike system that expunged entire
neighborhoods from the flood plain. Here Shelby gets mired in city
politics-as-usual. She devotes much space to displaced residents'
griping over the buyout offers they received from the city, and to
a redevelopment bid for an Amazon.com warehouse that had little to
do with the flood. Straining for pathos and meaning, she styles
Grand Forks' last seven years as a single, apocalyptic "Joycean
day" of "flood angst." That goes a bit far, but still, this is a
well-researched portrait of a city coping with a crisis. Photos.
Copyright (c) Reed Business Information, a division of Reed
Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Red River Rising is a beautifully written, haunting saga of a
community in distress. Although the touchstone of this narrative is
April 19, 1997, when one of the worst floods in U.S. history
occurred, in truth it's a gripping human drama with timeless
appeal. Words cannot fully express the admiration I have for Ashley
Shelby's seamless and compassionate prose-style"--Douglas Brinkley,
author of Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War and director
of the Eisenhower Center for American Studies at the University of
New Orleans
Red River Rising is a well-researched compelling narrative that
increases in suspense as the water rises. Ashley Shelby depicts a
city in crisis while conveying dramatically the complexity of
intergovernmental workings and interpersonal relationships."
--Douglas Whynott, author of A Unit of Water, a Unit of Time
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