The Day the World Came to Town - by Jim DeFede ---------------- 3 Stars

The Day the World Came to Town was a fairly popular book than turned into (I think) a more popular musical, Come From Away. Telling the story about Gander, Canada on 9/11, both the book and musical tell the incredible stories of the people who welcomed hundreds of people and dozens of flights that were diverted there rather than their intended destinations.  

As the book wasn't particularly long and the story uncomplicated, I don't have a long review to offer today. While I gave this book a middling rating it's not at all because the story being told is not extraordinary. In fact, it's quite the opposite. What stands out from reading this book is simply how incredible the people of Gander offered their hospitality and kindness to a bunch of perfect strangers. It's impossible to read this book and not think about the amazing and heartwarming examples of showing the best of humanity in a distinct moment of awfulness and evil.

The average rating comes more from my disinterest in parts of the book than anything about the story. I found the start fascinating and lead up to the planes landing to be quite interesting. Unfortunately, while the individual stories are noteworthy, I found them quite surface level and not enough in-depth to make me interested. Of course, much of the experiences people had for 4-5 days until they moved on were incredible and warming to hear. I just found that it went on longer than I was interested in learning about many of them (perhaps why the musical is so popular). Yet, I still am grateful that I read it and learned about this amazing small, but powerful, piece of history connected to 9/11.