Street Talk, (The Great Flood and Other Stories from a River City), is a collection of columns and stories written in the early 1980s by author and investigative journalist Dan Luzadder, a columnist for the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel. Included are his reflections and reporting on life in the city, including columns he wrote for the newspaper's Pulitzer-winning coverage of The Great Flood. This natural disaster in the spring of 1982 drew national attention and an appearance by President Ronald Reagan as thousands of residents were driven from their homes at the heart of the city where three rivers converge - and the city plunged into a desperate battle against the flood-of-the-century.
Also in this collection are the author's stories of news events that shape or influenced life in an historic river town. His accounts range from the shooting there in 1980 of civil rights leader Vernon Jordan, to his chronicle of the miraculous survival of a Fort Wayne man, lost adrift for three days in a lifejacket in the Bermuda Triangle. The author's story of a visit by the tender humanitarian Mother Theresa to this 'city of churches, ' is rekindled here, along with tales of everyday people in their everyday lives, snapshots of a time and place.
The News-Sentinel, an afternoon newspaper for which the author worked before moving on to investigative reporting and freelance writing, is also a part of the city's history now, succumbing to the decline of the newspaper industry under a changing communications landscape, the death of an institution that generated living history for more than 150 years.
This collection was selected and edited by Hannah Cowden, attorney, Cathlamet, Washington. The cover was designed and drawn by artist Michael Luzadder, a graduate student in neurobiology at the University of Colorado Boulder. The writer of Street Talk is also author of The Manchurian Journalist: Lawrence Wright, the CIA, and the Corruption of American Journalism, released by Trine Day in 2024.