Flower in the River: A Family Tale Finally Told
"Flower in the River" podcast, inspired by my book of the same name, explores the 1915 Eastland Disaster in Chicago and its enduring impact, particularly on my family's history. We'll explore the intertwining narratives of others impacted by this tragedy as well, and we'll dive into writing and genealogy and uncover the surprising supernatural elements that surface in family history research. Come along with me on this journey of discovery.
Podcasting since 2023 • 141 episodes
Flower in the River: A Family Tale Finally Told
Latest Episodes
The Rosetta Stone of the Eastland Disaster
Tracing the Eastland story back to the people who first preserved it online.This week, I’m pulling back the curtain on how, in the late 1990s, the Eastland Disaster story was rediscovered, shaped, reshaped, and carried onto the ea...
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Season 4
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Episode 140
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44:37
She Stayed on the Line: From the Eastland Disaster to the Front Lines of France
Sirens, floodwater, shattering glass, and a calm voice saying, “Just a moment, please.” We revisit the women who turned raw noise into order—telephone operators whose steady hands and quick minds kept cities connected and, in wartime, helped sa...
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Season 4
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Episode 139
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38:58
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The Afterlife of a Story
What happens when the storyteller is gone—but the story keeps rewriting itself?A single family biography can carry the weight of a neighborhood’s memory. We open the archives on a 20-year-old Western Electric employee who boarded ...
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Season 4
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Episode 138
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34:32
From Sea to City: A Mariner’s Journey into Chicago’s Past
A city comes alive when you can stand on a corner and glimpse yesterday behind today’s skyline. That’s the spark behind my conversation with Ryan Wilson, a designer and mariner who turned countless hours in archives into the Chicago History Map...
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Season 4
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Episode 137
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42:08
The Eastland Survivors and the Case of the Missing Bylines
Memory can vanish quietly—sometimes with a server shutdown. This week, we open the door to the Eastland disaster’s online past: from an early researcher’s dial-up “postcard pages” to an early Eastland website’s now-defunct archive. We ...
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Season 4
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Episode 136
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34:36
