GALLOPING GERTIE

On Dale Wirsing’s birthday in 1940, a 4-month-old suspension bridge collapses before his eyes.

Clean lines and an autumnal palette show young Dale walking with his parents across the brand-new span, whose sway caused it to be called Galloping Gertie. In one spread, its towers rise diagonally across the gutter and almost off the page, while Dale points excitedly—and the roadway bobs up and down in a hint of what’s to come. Attractive, modern design and a friendly trim size (approximately 7.5 by 9.75 inches) lend a necessary accessibility to this historical tale, while lively illustrations and no-nonsense text take care of the rest. Though Dale, watching the bridge from the kitchen window, frames the story, the narrative also peeks into other human-interest stories surrounding its collapse: engineer Clark Eldridge’s despair, a couple forced to abandon their truck, and multiple people trying to rescue a dog who was left in a car. (Unfortunately, the dog in fact died, but the narrator leaves that truth between the lines.) Depicting both the linearity of suspension cables and the chaos of fracturing supports, aided by well-integrated onomatopoeia, the art captures the crucial moments of swaying and breaking with remarkable accuracy and pathos. Named characters present White, with people of color depicted among the secondary illustrated cast. Six pages of endmatter neatly summarize and contextualize Gertie’s saga, revealing Eldridge’s time as a Japanese prisoner of war and recounting the legend of the giant Pacific octopus who apparently lives under the current Tacoma Narrows Bridge.

Gripping historical engineering drama.