Everything In Its Path

by Steve Alcorn

Theme Perks Press, 2003

Just after midnight on March 13, 1928 the recently constructed St. Francis Dam gave way, releasing a 160-foot-high wall of water down San Francisquito Canyon. The torrent swept huge pieces of the dam, some weighing ten thousand tons, more than a half mile downstream. Four hours later the water thundered into the Pacific Ocean after erasing nearly everything in its 50-mile path. By morning more than five hundred people were dead or missing. It was the worst American civil engineering disaster of the twentieth century.

Everything In Its Path tells the story of Santa Paula archaeologist Randall Thompson and his daughter Kate, who are excavating a Chumash Indian site in San Francisquito Canyon. As the dig progresses Randall is puzzled by remains buried beneath a layer of silt. Meanwhile Kate explores the town of Castaic Junction and the dam’s powerhouse, getting to know the real-life residents. Then she makes an alarming discovery: the dam is leaking!

Intertwined with Kate and Randall’s story is that of the prehistoric Chumash settlement they are unearthing. Tribe member Singing Bird is tormented by dreams of water and her village being swept away. But leader Lone Wolf belittles her premonitions and threatens her if she speaks out. As storm clouds gather, Singing Bird must decide whether to submit to Lone Wolf or try to save the tribe from the awful event she foresees.

Across the centuries the two girls’ fates are drawn together, culminating in a remarkable discovery as they struggle to save their loved ones from a force that will sweep away Everything In Its Path.

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Afterward

The events upon which this book is based are true.

Around midnight on the morning of March 13, 1928, the recently constructed St. Francis Dam gave way, releasing a 160-foot-high wall of water down San Francisquito Canyon. The torrent was powerful enough to sweep huge pieces of the dam, some weighing ten thousand tons, more than a half mile downstream. In five minutes the wall of water traveled the mile and a half to Powerhouse 2. The 65-foot-tall concrete structure was crushed like an eggshell. Ray Rising, Mrs. Curtis and her two-year-old son were the only survivors of the 28 families who lived there. 

For four hours the water thundered toward the Pacific Ocean, erasing nearly everything in its 50-mile path. There was only one survivor from the town of Castaic Junction. The towns of Piru, Fillmore and Santa Paula were largely destroyed. By morning, more than five hundred people were dead or missing. It was the worst American civil engineering disaster of the twentieth century.

William Mulholland, the man who brought water to Los Angeles, was a superb self-taught engineer, but he was not a trained geologist. In designing the St. Francis dam he failed to recognize the layer of schist upon which the dam was constructed was actually the remnant of an ancient landslide, and was fundamentally unstable. On the day before the disaster, Tony Harnischfeger, the dam keeper, called to report water leaking from the west abutment. Mulholland and his assistant hurried to the site and observed water leaking from both sides of the dam, but ultimately pronounced it safe and returned to Los Angeles.

In the aftermath of the disaster, Mulholland accepted full responsibility. On the witness stand at the inquest he broke down and wept. "Don't blame anybody else, you just fasten it on me," he said. "If there is an error of human judgment, I was the human."

William Mulholland surveys the aftermath.

Singing Bird's village is real. The modern town of Santa Paula is located near the ancient Chumash village of Mupu. 

It was common for Chumash families to travel inland during the summer, to collect grasses, seeds and other materials not available along the coast. They also traded with other tribes, exchanging shells and dried seafood for soapstone, obsidian and other materials from as far away as Arizona. The Chumash undoubtedly traveled in the vicinity of San Francisquito canyon, but I am unaware of any such archaeological evidence.

Although the events of 1540 are lost to prehistory, just two years later the first Spanish explorers, led by Juan Cabrillo, arrived in Chumash territory, and Singing Bird's world changed forever. 

But that is another story.

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Review:

Steve Alcorn's short but fully realized novel Everything In Its Path [buy at amazon] tells two parallel stories, one set in 1928 and the other set in 1540, just two years before Juan Cabrillo landed in California, opening California to the modern world. The stories are set in the same physical location, a canyon downstream from where the St. Francis Dam collapsed in 1928. The protagonist of each story is a young girl of about 12 years old. Each girl has interests and intentions that are unusual for her culture.

Aside from the thriller-type page-turning dramatic progression of both stories, I found the historical aspects interesting. For example, it certainly was fun to read about a time when gasoline cost just ten cents per gallon, and people needed to use blocks of ice to keep their food from spoiling. Also, thought provoking to think of a politically innocent time when you could just go out and dig up Native American skeletons and no one would think of you as doing anything but Archeology.

The story line from 1540 was fascinating as well, since it presented a lot of information about the Chumash Indians, but in a way that it wasn't a bit boring reading about it. Even though the book is short, by the end you have a very good picture of the details of Chumash daily life, and a fairly rich imagining of Chumash spiritual life.

The best part of the book, though, was the dam disaster and its aftermath. The preamble to the disaster, and the dam collapse itself, are related with an extremely light touch. You might expect that a novel about a civil engineering disaster to be filled with a dull engineering back-story. But then you might also expect to guess the endings of the stories of the two girls. You would be wrong in both cases.

I can honestly say that when Everything In Its Path [buy at amazon] by Steve Alcorn arrived, I started reading it right away, even though I was already reading a novel I had been looking forward to reading for eight years: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I actually found Alcorn's novel about the St. Francis Dam Disaster of 1928 absorbing and involving me right from the start. I finished reading it before I read another page of Harry Potter's final adventure.

-George Girton
thedailchannel.com