Every now and then, a story comes along that introduces a character from history who never should've been forgotten in the first place. Genie Chance--a radio reporter from Anchorage, Alaska--is one such person. When a devastating earthquake struck the city in 1964, Genie became a voice for all of Anchorage, working nearly three days straight to broadcast alerts, put out calls for resources and manpower, and read aloud hundreds of individual messages in hopes of connecting loved ones otherwise unable to communicate.
As captured in Jon Mooallem's This Is Chance!, the radio reporter's heroics for local station KENI was but one of countless stories of regular people who took the burden of ensuring Anchorage's future on their own shoulders. Far from being a straightforward recounting of events, Mooallem's account latches onto a production of Thornton Wilder's classic piece of meta-theater, Our Town, as a framework for the story. A production of the play was scheduled to take place the night of the quake, but Mooallem also employs characteristics of the show's Stage Manager in sharing the story of Chance and the '64 Anchorage quake. Beyond this intriguing element, Mooallem's knack for description is also one of the book's biggest strengths. "All over Anchorage, so many rectangles and squares had become shapes with no names," he writes of the earthquake's structural carnage. As Mooallem himself begins to enter the narrative late in the story (referred to in the third person), he reveals the fascinating ways in which disaster can intangibly connect people as a core focus of this engaging, enlightening read. --Zack Ruskin, freelance reviewer