The Last Train to Key West (The Perez Family, #3)

by Chanel Cleeton

When they print the names of the missing and the dead in the newspaper the next day, there is one notable addition to the list of the missing: Thomas Berner

The stories trickling out of the Keys are truly horrific. Bodies are showing up far from the storm’s path, blown miles and miles away, some dead from their injuries, others too weak to be expected to survive.

It seems supremely unfair that these were the survivors of the Great War, the men who came home and should have lived out their remaining days lauded as heroes. Instead, they went from one tragedy to the next.

They didn’t even give them a chance. What’s the point of honoring their death when you threw them away in life? You should have seen the condition those camps were in, the way we lived.

The headline screams of an estimated death toll of one thousand people, and the photos are more gruesome than the headline.

If I have learned anything in this life, it is that you cannot prepare for the unexpected that sneaks up on you and turns your world upside down.

Mr. Flagler’s magical railroad in twisted metal pieces, we are left with the storm’s aftermath.

More than two hundred fifty of the veterans—over half—have perished. The work camps have been obliterated. We now know at least four hundred people are dead throughout the Keys.

Nature has destroyed the railroad that Man spent decades building, the lifeline that was going to bring more tourists, increase opportunities for residents.

They say it is the strongest storm to ever hit the United States, and for those of us who have lived through it, that fact is indisputable.

For the first time in as long as I can remember, I have a semblance of peace.

There’s so much broken around us; maybe all we can do is try to fix each other, do what we can to preserve these precious moments in a world where there is so much sadness and loss.

I’m filled with an emotion I haven’t felt in such a long time that I almost don’t recognize it, the taste of it sweet and tangy in my mouth— Hope.

For me, this is enough: A corner of paradise in this wretched world that I am able to call my own.

In the hurricane coverage, there was a story of a hurricane I was unfamiliar with—the 1935 Labor Day hurricane, one of the strongest and deadliest storms to strike the United States.

While the death toll is disputed, numbers range between approximately four hundred and eight hundred lost souls.

The Overseas Extension of the Florida East Coast Railway—once referred to as “Flagler’s Folly”—was destroyed and never rebuilt, and in 1938, the new Overseas Highway was opened using stretches of the destroyed Overseas Railroad.