Dark Tide Style

I'll be upfront about it. I did not like Dark Tide. I thought the idea was great and the tragedy itself was something that would be interesting to study and learn about, however Puleo lost me. I tried to like the book, I really did. I read and reread and wrote in the book and underlined and tried to make sense of it, but the cast of characters mixed with the fact that there was so much going on that wasn't entirely important to the main plot was hard to follow.
        
             Puleo simply incorporates too many characters at random points of the book and then waits fifty pages before revisiting them. As an example, we are first introduced to Hugh Ogden on page 63 (paperback) and are told of him as he is in France. Readers are told for three pages of his background and only the very last line of that seems even a little relevant to the main part of the plot, "... he would preside over one of the country's most celebrated civil lawsuits, stemming from one of the most unusual disasters in United States history." The next time we hear from him is page 80 (paperback) when we learn all about the "Rainbow Division, his wartime sights and the fact he wants to start his own law practice. Soon after the disaster happens and the reader is pummeled with images of the devastation and thoughts of the dead. And, as if out of nowhere, Ogden comes back in on page 163 (paperback) without any re-introduction. Personally, I had to search through the book to find out and remember who this man was and what, to this point, he had done. I admire Puleo's attempts to show the disaster in as many ways and lights as possible but I think he over-shot it too much and it just seemed scattered. One way he could have avoided the confusion would be to have one worker (such as Issac), one manager (like Jell), one or two towns people (instead of the many he had) and one lawyer (Ogden). I think if he had done this then the book would be much simpler and it would be less characters to have to remember and follow.  

            On top of the multitude of characters there was the fact that Puleo wants to incorporate so much history he tends to loose the main focus of the book. I understand that he wants to give the full account of the history, he says in the first line of author's note "This is the first full accounting of the Great Boston Molasses Flood". However, he seems to go too far off topic sometimes and I would increasingly become bored or wait for these incidents to have any kind of impact on the flood story and be disappointed with the fact that it never did seem to have any relevance. Obviously, the anarchists played a small role in the flood, with that being USIA's main defense and excuse for the tank's demolition. Puleo, however, seems to want to prove to the reader that the anarchists are evil beings who may detonate a molasses tank due to the many times he goes off topic and gives the reader details about anarchist's bombings in  other cities, to other buildings and other people. He even goes and names the anarchists and adds even more characters to the reader's growing list of names. Then readers get the stories of the anarchists and their ultimate demise whether by capture or suicide. Yes, this gives the reader background into the anarchists that were threatening Boston and the country as a whole, but all that could have been summed up with "USIA believed and stuck to the claim that the tank was bombed by anarchists who were making the same kind of moves all over the country" or something to that effect. One sentence would have given the reader all the information they needed to understand why this might be a believable excuse.

             I like history, please believe me. It's not that I'm uninterested in the Molasses Flood, because I am. Just like most people who live near Boston, I've heard the jokes and the tales that you can still smell Molasses on a hot day and I've heard of the flood prior to reading this book. Honestly, I did want to know more. But, this book made it hard for me to be able to learn because I had such a hard time getting through it. I respect that Puleo was trying to give the reader a full coverage of the disaster from everybody's viewpoint. I admire him for trying to put as much history as possible into the book and honestly trying to teach something to the reader, past just the flood. However, these things lacked in execution. I'm not saying I hated the book, there were good things about it and Puleo's writing. He has great imagery and I could ofter times, for better or worse, see the molasses and the tank when it was painted the color of the molasses and the poor townspeople who were in the hospital after the tragedy their hair staining the pillows to the color of molasses. It just happened that the people he chose to talk about were too much and the world around the disaster was full of changes and occurrences that had to be brought into the discussion. Overall I think Puleo is a man who is a little bit too focused on all the details and that sometimes gets lost in those rather than the big picture.