American author, journalist, and teacher John Hersey (1914-1993) is best known today for two early works: the novel A Bell for Adano, which was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1945, and Hiroshima, which traces the lives of six people who survived the atomic bombing of Japan in 1945. Hersey published more than 25 books over his long career and is considered one of the leading practitioners of modern creative nonfiction.

Originally published in The New Yorker magazine, "Over the Mad River" describes the destruction wrought by a hurricane on the small city of Winsted, Connecticut in August 1955. Here, in a passage that might be favorably compared to Jack London's classic account of the San Francisco earthquake and fire ("The Story of an Eyewitness"), Hersey offers a narrative report on the flooding of Winsted.

from "Over the Mad River"*

by John Hersey

It was six o'clock, and the flood had reached its crest, which it was to hold for nearly six hours. The rain continued. Highland Lake was running over its spillways and tearing out threatening gullies right across the macadam road on the causeway on either side of them and causing terrible damage in factories and homes between the lake and the river below. All the way from Norfolk, the Mad River was brimming. Along Main Street, it was fifteen feet above its normal level, and the water was ten feet deep in the street itself. It was literally ripping up Main Street.

The pavement and sidewalks were being sliced away and gutted six feet deep. The water had broken the plate-glass windows of most of the stores along the street and had ruined their stocks. Winsted Motors, a Buick showroom and service station that had straddled the river high up the street, had been completely demolished, and its new and used cars were rolling all the way downtown, and its roof had lodged itself in mid-street right in front of the Town Hall. On the second floor of the Town Hall, forty-one policemen and Civil Defense workers and the chairlady of the Winsted Red Cross were marooned. All but two of the town's twelve bridges had collapsed or were about to. A four-story hotel at the foot of the street, the Clifton, had floated off its foundation and into the river and downstream three-quarters of a mile, and had settled in the town ball field, more or less erect but with its two lower floors worn away. The water was doing damage to private property that the town estimated at nearly twenty-eight million dollars--more than the entire grand list of assessed taxable property, for assessments in Winsted, as generally in Connecticut, were considerably under real values.

Selected Works by John Hersey

• Into the Valley, nonfiction (1943)
• A Bell for Adano, novel (1944)
• Hiroshima, nonfiction (1945); revised edition, 1985
• The Wall, novel (1950)
• The War Lover, novel (1959)
• The Child Buyer, novel (1960)
• The Algiers Motel Incident, nonfiction (1968)
• Letter to the Alumni, nonfiction (1970)
• The Conspiracy, novel (1972)
• Aspects of the Presidency, nonfiction (1980)
• Blues, nonfiction (1987)
• Here to Stay, articles (1988)
• Life Sketches, biographical sketches (1989)
• White Lotus, novel (1990)
• Fling and Other Stories (1990)
• Antonietta, nonfiction (1991)
• Key West Tales, 1994

* "Over the Mad River" by John Hersey originally appeared in the September 17, 1955 issue of The New Yorker magazine. A lightly revised version was published in the collection Here to Stay, Paragon House Publishers, 1988.