Welcome to Litsy!

The thrilling, cinematic story of a community shattered by disaster--and the unlikely woman around whom it pulled together. In 1964, Anchorage, Alaska, was a modern-day frontier town yearning to be a metropolis--the largest, proudest city in a state that was still brand-new. Then, just before sundown on Good Friday, the most powerful earthquake in American history struck. For four and a half minutes, the ground lurched and rolled. Streets cracked open and swallowed buildings whole. When the shaking stopped, night fell and Anchorage went dark. Everyone was isolated from one another and sealed off from the outside world. Slowly, people switched on transistor radios and heard a woman's familiar voice explaining what just happened and what to do next. Her name was Genie Chance, and she was a working mother and part-time radio reporter who'd play an extraordinary role in the disaster's aftermath, helping her fractured community reconnect and cohere. Genie's broadcasts over the next three days would transform her into a legendary figure in Alaska and bring her fame worldwide--but only briefly. Drawing on thousands of pages of newly discovered documents, interviews with survivors, and recordings of original radio broadcasts, This Is Chance! is the gorgeously told story of a single, catastrophic weekend in a faraway town and a cast of endearingly eccentric characters who endured it. There are moments when reality instantly changes--when it becomes clear that the lives we assume are stable actually rest on pure happenchance. This Is Chance! shows human resilience rising above that randomness and human connection withstanding chaos. That Easter weekend, ordinary people were thrown into a jumbled world they couldn't recognize. Together they'd figure out how to make a home in it again.