“Pete Daniel’s prose flows like the mighty river he describes. Through rich description, both in his own words and those of contemporaries, and through photographs, he re-creates the moods that rolled through the Mississippi Valley in 1927, as Old Man River thrust aside levees and swept across millions of square miles of land in its full fury, carrying all—man, beast, and structures—before it. … Deep’n as It Come is an outstanding blend of oral history, photo-documentation, and written sources. The traditional types of sources are utilized effectively, the work is fully documented, and the style and organization are clear. Numerous works, routine historical narratives, meet these criteria; this one goes beyond. Pete Daniel is to be congratulated, for his work not only informs—it also grips the reader and involves him in the human drama of man’s greatest struggle with the mighty powers of the Father of Waters.”
—James E. Fickle, The Alabama Review, April 1978
“Anyone who has lived near a major river will find Pete Daniel’s Deep’n as It Come to be a realistic narration of the eternal struggle between nature and technology. The work provides a dramatic presentation of the Mississippi River’s assault upon property and lives, vividly protrayed through the use of 148 pictures, innumerable firsthand accounts, and official reports. This author’s view of what may have been the worst flood in American history is that the disaster evoked both the good and bad in human response and also challenged some basic American premises. … This documentary of a great national disaster is ably written and carefully researched.”
—George W. Robinson, The Journal of American History