F lorida differs from most of the rest of the world in an important way: much of its current population has no connection to or knowledge of its history. Many residents are non-natives who migrated here over the past quarter century. But another, more complex reason for this lack of knowledge is that some of the state's history -- particularly its black history -- has been summarily buried, literally and figuratively.

Historian Eliot Kleinberg, a writer for The Palm Beach Post, has spent years digging up some of the most devastating pieces of Florida's historic puzzle, and his painstaking work has paid off in the heart-wrenching Black Cloud . The title refers to the deadly hurricane that swept across the state in 1928, taking thousands of lives. It also recalls the gloom hanging over the black community, whose dead went unacknowledged for decades. Hundreds of bodies were thrown into a mass unmarked grave in West Palm Beach, obliterated and forgotten. Hundreds more went up in smoke, burned en masse in funeral pyres, gone in a great dark cloud as they reached toward the heavens.

Kleinberg opens by introducing a few real-life characters as he shares the history of the land during the half-century leading up to the storm. He describes a land drained by opportunists and farmed by hard-working outcasts of larger society, mostly black migrants trying to carve independent if difficult lives in the Everglades.

''Environmentalists either kept quiet or were ignored in the rush of optimism,'' he writes about the massive waterway building and land drainage that began in the late 1800s, increasing tourism, development and agriculture. Early critics, he says, were ``drowned out by the pistons of progress and the din of prosperity.''

He describes the first storms of the century, building up to the big one, which killed a reported 1,836, a figure the author says is very likely far too low. ``One has to wonder, had the storm drowned 3,000 white businessmen in downtown West Palm Beach, or smashed a black-tie affair on ritzy Palm Beach, instead of killing mostly black migrant workers from the Caribbean in the vegetable fields of Florida's interior, might it have received more attention over the years?''

Kleinberg sets out to right this unforgivable slight. He brings the disaster to life, meticulously weaving together varied strands of history, collected from numerous resources, to form a realistic re-enactment of the second-deadliest natural catastrophe in U.S. history. And the research wasn't easy. Even the Post was missing the archives of its afternoon edition for that particular month.

The onslaught of facts makes the narrative a bit clunky, and there is a choppy quality to the flow of information. While the wind and water are sweeping away one family, another is oblivious to impending danger. But Kleinberg has created a readable story by sharing the lives of those affected by the storm: the weather forecasters, newspaper reporters, farmers and migrant workers, businessmen, preachers, doctors and their families.

Loaded with technical details, historical facts and quotes from local papers and survivors, Black Cloud charts the storm's path from the Caribbean to Canada (overall, about 7,000 were left dead in its wake). He details the faulty reports and misconceptions that prevented settlers from being better prepared as the storm approached.

The second half of the book follows the struggle to recover from the storm. ''Coffins were not wasted on black victims,'' he reports, sharing grim tales of lone survivors finding beloved families amid piles of bloated bodies. People were caught in trees, balanced for hours on rooftops with children in their arms, clinging to each other and dead animals throughout the storm, clothes blown off and bodies ripped to shreds by flying debris. Families were separated, some swept away by the floods and lost forever. A dog was found five days after the storm, standing attentively over the dead body of his elderly master.

The stunned community in Florida began to return to normal after several days. Whites conscripted blacks, many of whom were still in mourning, into clean-up service, heads held righteously high as leaders and citizens reclaimed proprietary attitudes, reverting to the familiar comfort of the Jim Crow class consciousness of the 1920s. Officials called in loads of Prohibition contraband to fortify the spirits of rescue workers.

Kleinberg is not alone with his mission of reviving this story. He writes that Palm Beach County state attorney Barry Krischer has joined the wave to wash the dusty cover from this chapter of the state's history. Krischer is working with local school administrator Robert Hazard, who envisions a multimillion-dollar community center and monument at the gravesite at Tamarind Avenue and 25th Street in West Palm Beach, two miles south of downtown. Today, however, the site is still just a field, marked with an old-fashioned iron fence and granite cornerstones that read simply: ``1928.''

Trish Riley is a writer in South Florida.