When the River Ran Backward

Mention earthquakes in the United States, and most people immediately think of California. Yet, the most powerful series of seismic events in recorded American history did not strike the West Coast, but the heart of the Midwest. In the winter of 1811, the frontier town of New Madrid, Missouri, became the epicenter of a catastrophe so violent it literally defied the laws of nature. The quakes were so massive that they rang church bells in Boston, cracked sidewalks in Washington D.C., and caused the mighty Mississippi River to temporarily flow backward, creating entirely new lakes in the process. Because the region was sparsely populated by pioneers and indigenous tribes, the true magnitude of the disaster was largely undocumented and quickly forgotten by the East Coast establishment. This gripping geological history brings the terror of the New Madrid sequence back to life. It examines the horrifying eyewitness accounts of the earth liquefying, the bizarre atmospheric phenomena that accompanied the shocks, and the terrifying reality of the hidden intraplate fault line that still lies dormant beneath the Midwest today. Explore the forgotten cataclysm that reshaped the American landscape. Learn why the geology of the central United States makes it uniquely vulnerable to seismic waves, and what would happen if the New Madrid fault awoke today.