Thousands of impoverished Northern European immigrants were promised that the prairie offered "land, freedom, and hope." The disastrous blizzard of 1888 revealed that their free homestead was not a paradise but a hard, unforgiving place governed by natural forces they neither understood nor controlled, and America’s heartland would never be the same.

"David Laskin captures the brutal, heartbreaking folly of this chapter in America's history." --Erik Larson, author of Isaac's Storm and The Devil in the White City

"A fascinating account of the day the wind finally did what it always promises to do on those bleak Dakota prairies." --Wall Street Journal

"David Laskin gives us the complete story in all its fascinating, often harrowing detail...A vital addition to the lore of Western immigrant pioneering." --Washington Post