They reveal how the first fire department units were incorrectly directed to the Rectory around the corner from the school, costing valuable minutes. Much of the story is told through the eyes of children who experienced it and lived to tell, as well as family members of victims, firefighters and clergy. They relate what happened, minute by minute, in each of the six north wing classrooms most heavily affected by the fire. Kuenster have collaborated to produce a book that covers in significant detail the events of Decemat Our Lady of the Angels.

Yet this book is the first and only comprehensive story of this tragedy. Our Lady of the Angels (OLA) school burned in 1958, killing 92 young children and three nuns.

The Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago also refused to press an investigation, preferring to label the fire a terrible 'accident.' The authors reveal for the first time this youngster's 'confession' and the decision by a local judge not to pursue the case against him. Beyond the flames, the story of the fire at Our Lady of the Angels became an enigma whose mystery has deepened with time: its cause was never officially explained despite evidence that it had been intentionally set by a troubled student at the school. In gripping detail, the authors describe the fear, desperation, and panic that prevailed among children, teachers, firefighters, and parents in and around the stricken school building on that cold Monday afternoon. It is a story of ordinary people caught up in a mind-numbing disaster. David Cowan and John Kuenster have worked for years, talking with hundreds of sources and ferreting our documents to reconstruct a minute-by-minute narrative of the tragedy and the sorrows of its aftermath. In To Sleep with the Angels, two veteran journalists tell the moving story of the fire and its consequences. No one was ever prosecuted for setting the fire to this day it remains an officially unsolved mystery. It left many families physically and psychologically scarred for life, destroyed a close-knit working-class neighborhood, and sowed popular suspicion of the church hierarchy and city fathers. The blaze at Our Lady of the Angels School shocked the nation. On a grey winter day in December 1958, one of the deadliest fires in American history took the lives of ninety-two children and three nuns at a Catholic elementary school on Chicago's West Side.

To Sleep with the Angels by David Cowan