Here you can find information on the many titles housed in the Millcreek Community Center Library's book club collection. We have summaries of each book, as well as links to our catalogue, and other resources for reading groups. All titles can be checked out singly or as a set to anyone with a Salt Lake County Library card.
Monday, January 24, 2022
This Is Chance!: The Great Alaska Earthquake, Genie Chance, and the Shattered City She Held Together by John Mooallem
The thrilling, cinematic story of a community shattered by
disaster—and the extraordinary woman who helped pull it back together.
In the spring of 1964, Anchorage, Alaska, was a
modern-day frontier town yearning to be a metropolis—the largest,
proudest city in a state that was still brand-new. But just before
sundown on Good Friday, the community was jolted by the most powerful
earthquake in American history, a catastrophic 9.2 on the Richter Scale.
For four and a half minutes, the ground lurched and rolled. Streets
cracked open and swallowed buildings whole. And once the shaking
stopped, night fell and Anchorage went dark. The city was in disarray
and sealed off from the outside world.
Slowly, people switched on their transistor radios and heard a
familiar woman’s voice explaining what had just happened and what to do
next. Genie Chance was a part-time radio reporter and working mother who
would play an unlikely role in the wake of the disaster, helping to put
her fractured community back together. Her tireless broadcasts over the
next three days would transform her into a legendary figure in Alaska
and bring her fame worldwide—but only briefly. That Easter weekend in
Anchorage, Genie and a cast of endearingly eccentric characters—from a
mountaineering psychologist to the local community theater group staging
Our Town—were thrown into a jumbled world they could not recognize. Together, they would make a home in it again.
Drawing on thousands of pages of unpublished documents, interviews with survivors, and original broadcast recordings, This Is Chance! is
the hopeful, gorgeously told story of a single catastrophic weekend and
proof of our collective strength in a turbulent world.
There are moments when reality instantly changes—when the life we assume is stable gets upended by pure chance. This Is Chance! is
an electrifying and lavishly empathetic portrayal of one community
rising above the randomness, a real-life fable of human connection
withstanding chaos.
To find a discussion guide for this book in the NoveList Plus database, go to the Library's website, click on Novelist under "We Recommend" → "Book Services". Click on "Book Discussion Guides" in the right sidebar on NoveList's
home page. Then, either enter the title in the Search box or search for
the title alphabetically. (You will need your Salt Lake County Library
card number to access this resource outside a county library.)
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