102 minutes

Where were you on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001?

Thanks to Flashlight Worthy Books and their list for Best Books About 9/11, I just picked up 102 Minutes: the Untold Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers.

It focuses on the disaster as experienced through the eyes and ears of those who were within the towers during and after the plane crashes.

I like a good disaster book and reading about the tenacity of the human soul to survive incredible conditions, but I've steered clear of anything to do with 9/11. It's too recent, too close to home. There are too many conspiracy theories and too much politicizing of it. Reading about a volcano explosion on a distant island, or a catastrophic flood that occurred 100 years ago is much easier.

When I read both the official and reader-submitted reviews on Amazon, I became intrigued. The words "fast-paced," "easy to read," "vividly rendered," "unflinching," and "Sad, but education and interesting," caught my attention, and I reserved the book at my local library (along with nine others, based on various lists from Flashlight Worthy Books -- really, go check it out, it's a great website).

I picked up the book last night, and although I was exhausted and ready for bed at 10, I couldn't put it down. I read until my eyes--against my will--closed at about 11:30, and this morning? I wanted to pick it right back up again.

While it's a little hard to follow all the people they name, the authors do a good job of keeping the reader grounded in location (although I do get a little confused between the north and south towers). They based the book on 100s of hours of interviews, phone transcripts, text messages, e-mails--real communications that occurred, which makes the story all the more heartwrenching.

I find this book particularly relevant. I didn't experience the immediate TV news cycle that morning, like many in America. On 9/11, I was stuck near the top of the Santa Catalina Mountains, just north of Tucson, at the end of a weekend camping trip. A two-lane road winds up from the desert floor to the pine trees, and it was under construction just above Geology Point Vista, which is about two-thirds of the way up (an hour to an hour-and-a-half away from mid-Tucson). The construction crews were only permitting one lane of cars through the construction zone at a time, which meant waiting 30 or more minutes for a pilot car to arrive. I was scrambling on a nearby boulder, when a crazed woman tumbled out of her old VW van, screaming, "They've bombed the Twin Towers! Terrorists are attacking us!"

"What?" I looked at my husband. He shrugged. We went back to playing on the boulder. But then we noticed a buzz from the other folks waiting in line. People were talking, turning on their radios. We went down to our car and did the same. Every station was reporting the same thing--terrorists had attacked the East Coast.

Surprisingly, the best coverage came from the local alternative radio station. The morning hosts, normally wanna-be Howard Sterns, turned into professional newscasters, focusing on the facts of the events, rather than the emotions or the misinformation that seemed to be prevalent on other stations. I spent the the next 90 or so minutes glued to the station to glean more information. It wasn't until almost two hours later that I finally arrived at my in-laws' house and was able to actually see the devastation. By then, cable TV had settled on a few clips that showed particular scenes over and over again.

I've often wondered what happened to the people of Morgan Stanley. From about February of 2001 until about three weeks before the attack, I worked for a local branch. Every day, I called headquarters at the World Trade Center to deliver numbers. I sent a daily package of paperwork to them. I knew they were on the upper floors, and I wondered if any of the people I had talked to made it out alive. I hope to find out more as I get further into the book, which is allowing me to finally "see" what happened in chronological sequence. I hope the remainder of the book is as good as the first few chapters.