In the Unlikely Event

In the Unlikely Event by Judy Blume          Audio Book: 14 hours    Mass Market Paperback:  512 pages                  

Set in the 1950s throughout most of the book, the author blends her own knowledge and experience of a traumatic time when during 1950 and 1951 when 3 airplanes fell to the ground in Elizabeth New Jersey.    Judy Blume lived in Elizabeth, New Jersey at the time and wrote this story as a fictionalized version of her very real experience.   She also consulted a couple of defunct local Elizabeth, H. J. newspapers for background and details (memories only go so far).   She describes in vivid detail the horror of being a teenager and seeing the aftermath of the carnage.   She notes in the book how one young woman was wearing a bracelet and how the only thing they found of her body after the crash was her arm with the bracelet still on it intact.   Many of the people who experienced the tragic event went into shock and some had breakdowns (the mother of one of the pilots mentioned in the book) over losing loved ones.    Horrific occurences to be witness to.   No one there will ever forget it.   Often while reading I felt Judy Blume was exorcising the demons she was fleeing and I pray the experience is a cathartic one for her.     The main character Miri Ammerman, I have the strong sense was Judy Blume during that time.  It felt as though Judy was working out dealing with the distress she is still filled  with I am sure.    I will never forget seeing the film “Faces of Death” back in the 80s.    One of the early things you see in that film is the aftermath of plane crash and all that is strewn on the suburban street where most of the wreckage fell.   Body parts even went through some of the homes on the street and this is similar to what Judy Blume describes.    That was a film and I still recall it vividly, actually having been at school and having witnessed the planes coming toward you as they drop from the sky. not knowing if you would be killed, then not knowing who you knew who may have been killed (and later getting the verification of your worst fears) as you wade through the bits of debris that minutes before had been an entire aircraft aloft in the sky.    She describes what the characters were thinking, the chilling dreams they had if they could sleep at all and how one girl flips out and can’t stop tap dancing and whirling around the floor until she drops to the floor in exhaustion later fearing sleep for the nightmares that might come and being unable to eat because her body rejects any morsel she tries to put into it.    Judy Blume describes the girl’s experience going under psychiatric care in such an all-encompassing multi-level experience that I have to wonder if she didn’t write that from her own ptds journey.   Many characters make up this story with many true to life situations.   The mood lightens throughout but all in all this is a very somber look back at trying times.   The book ends in the late 1980s – 35 years after the plane crashes.   It reveals the fates of the survivors of that grave time, those that moved on and those that tried to.    As with life, good things, changes, bad things, some folks left,  some stayed in Elizabeth – Judy Blume as of 2015 was living in the Florida Keyes,  but as my grandmother used to say, “No matter how far a bird flies, his tail (tale) is always behind him.”   I feel Judy has tried to move away from those memories and maybe after having gotten them out of her mind and put down on paper now the healing can begin for her.    The book left me feeling she had unburdened herself.   I hope that is true.   It is definetly not a feel good book but a probe into the psyche of the broken.    Really well written as Judy Blume books tend to be, just be sure you are in a place where you want to delve into a depressing story.