The Blood-Red Night

The forgotten story of the Great Peshtigo Fire, 1871

Author: Lauren Tarshis

abandon

“ But few families had enough money to simply abandon their land and start again someplace new.” (p. 7)

Definition: to leave forever

brush

“Farmers used fire to clear their land of tree stumps and brush left behind by the lumberjacks.” (pg. 6)

Definition: small trees and shrubs

charred

“By the morning, more than a billion trees were gone, and an area twice the size of Rhode Island was a sea of charred trees and ash.” (pg. 9)

Definition: burned

flammable

“These rare fires happen when there are strong winds and large amounts of flammable material—like trees–to feed the flames.” (pg. 8)

Definition: likely to catch fire

inferno

“Whipped up by the wind, the small fires in the forest grew bigger until, finally, they all joined together into one monstrous inferno.” (pg. 8)

Definition: a raging fire or place of intense heat

marsh

“Just 40 years earlier, Chicago was a small town on a mosquito-ridden marsh.” (pg. 6)

Definition: an area of wet, low land

parched

“Little rain had fallen during the summer, and the entire Midwest of the United States was parched.” (pg. 6)

Definition: very dried out or thirsty

sawmill

“The river’s rushing waters carried the giant logs downstream to Peshtigo’s sawmill, where they were transformed into lumber for building.” (pg. 6)

Definition: a place where people use machines to saw logs into lumber

“October 8 dawned unnaturally hot, and the sky glowed orange from the many small fires smoldering in the forest.” (pg. 7)

Definition: to burn and smoke slowly, usually with no flames

smoldering