Title Page

Dedication

For my husband, Marc Mohan. Go, Pack!

Downtown Portland

DOWNTOWN PORTLAND

Epigraph

REMEMBER:

DIKES ARE SAFE AT PRESENT.

YOU WILL BE WARNED IF NECESSARY.

YOU WILL HAVE TIME TO LEAVE.

DON’T GET EXCITED.

—Statement issued by the Housing Authority of Portland to the people of Vanport, Oregon, on May 30, 1948.

CONTENTS

Title Page

Dedication

Downtown Portland

Epigraph

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Also by Chelsea Cain

Copyright

Prologue

PROLOGUE

Memorial Day, 1948

Floyd Wright came bursting into Williams’s office, red-faced and out of breath, his clothes dusty from the speeder.

“It’s bad,” Floyd said.

Williams stood up at his desk. He took the news in stride. You didn’t get to be president of the Portland Union Stockyards without having an iron stomach. He’d known this could happen. It’s why he’d sent Floyd out on patrol. He was already calculating their losses, rerouting cattle cars on alternate lines. If the tracks were down for a few days, they could still get the butchers their meat.

Williams’s secretary scrambled into the office after Floyd, but Williams didn’t want her interrupting. He motioned for her to wait, and she stopped a few steps inside the door.

“What are we looking at?” Williams asked Floyd.

Floyd held his hat in his hands. “It’s the west side,” he said. “Complete collapse. Fifty feet, at least.”

Fifty feet? They had expected that the dike might spring a few leaks. Those could be repaired. A fifty-foot breach was something else entirely. There weren’t contingencies for that.

“Oh my lord,” the secretary said.

She was staring out the window, her hand covering her mouth.

Williams had spent enough time at that window watching the cattle cars come in to know exactly what she was looking at.

He stepped around his desk and moved quickly to her side, motioning for Floyd to do the same. It was a clear sunny day, seventy-six degrees. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. The office was on the top floor. Beyond a hundred acres of wooden pens that held cattle waiting for slaughter, they had a good view of the city of Vanport, and to the east, the railroad tracks that formed the city’s eastern boarder. Seventy-six two-story apartment buildings were arranged in groups of four around utility buildings. A movie theater. An elementary school.