Unimaginable and Unknowing
By Martin Fulmer
I am Martin Fulmer from Goodwell, OK, here for the HPPR Radio Readers Book Club’s 2026 Fall Read.
Growing up in the Carolinas, I never thought of blizzards as part of my weather vocabulary. Hurricanes, yes. But blizzards belonged somewhere else. Melanie Benjamin’s The Children’s Blizzard reminded me that weather has a way of making such distinctions meaningless.
Benjamin’s novel is inspired by the devastating blizzard that swept across the Great Plains on January 12, 1888. The day began unusually mild after bitter cold, so children returned to their one-room schools, many without their heaviest winter clothing. Then the weather changed with terrifying speed. Young teachers suddenly had to decide whether their students were safer inside poorly heated schoolhouses or trying to reach home through a blinding storm.
I have never experienced anything approaching what those children and teachers endured. But while reading the novel, I kept remembering three times when snow turned an ordinary journey into something frightening.
The first was during Christmas break in 1994. I was backpacking with friends in the mountains of North Carolina. The weather had been mild until our final day, when a snowstorm arrived as we were leaving. We still had about three miles to hike to the parking lot. Then I had to drive us down a narrow dirt mountain road with switchbacks and a precipitous drop on one side.
I remember gripping the steering wheel, feeling responsible for the two friends riding with me. They laughed at how nervous I was, which only made me angry. Eventually we reached the highway, but snow was already covering it. We crept into Brevard, found a breakfast diner, ate, and checked into an inn until the roads were safe.
Years later, a friend and I were driving from South Carolina to Colorado when an unexpected blizzard caught us one evening in Kansas. The interstate closed, and there was nothing to do but pull off, find a motel, and wait until the road reopened the next day.
My third encounter came while driving from the Carolinas to Boston for a conference. Heavy snow reduced interstate traffic to a slow procession. I followed the taillights of the car ahead while another car followed mine. Wind drove snow directly into my windshield until anxiety finally overcame my determination to keep moving. I pulled off and waited.
Those memories helped me appreciate what Benjamin makes so frighteningly clear: weather changes our choices. A road that was safe an hour ago becomes dangerous. Continuing forward can be reckless, but stopping can carry risks of its own.
In the 1888 blizzard, the teachers in Benjamin’s novel confront that dilemma with stakes almost unimaginable today. They have no weather app, heated automobile, roadside motel, or reliable way to summon help. Some are barely older than the children whose lives depend upon their decisions.
Throughout this Fall Read, we have encountered wind in different forms. In The Children’s Blizzard, wind becomes cold, snow, and disorientation. It erases landmarks and transforms familiar ground into something suddenly unknowable.
My own blizzards ended with warm meals, motel rooms, and safe roads the next morning. Benjamin’s characters have no such certainty. Knowing the difference made me read their story with humility—and made the warmth of an ordinary room feel a little less ordinary.
I am Martin Fulmer from Goodwell, OK, here for the HPPR Radio Readers Book Club’s 2026 Fall Read.
Martin Fulmer is an Assistant Professor of English and Director of the Writing Center at Oklahoma Panhandle State University. His fiction and creative nonfiction have appeared in Story Quarterly, Burrow Press Review, Story South, and other literary journals. He lives and works in Oklahoma with his dogs, Rose and Hector.
