“Maybe, Everly Winthrop, we are the ones who make meaning out of the tragedies.”
I had never heard of the Pulaski before reading this book. To be honest, I didn’t even know what this book was about before I picked it up–I only knew that it was written by the incredible Patti Callahan Henry, so it had to be good, and I wasn’t disappointed. The Pulaski was a steamship that set out from Savannah, Georgia in the 1830s; thanks to a mistake, it sunk on the open water, resulting in the death of hundreds of people. Those who survived the wreck were changed forever.
Everly Winthrop, history professor and lover of all things Savannah, has been tasked with telling the story of the Pulaski and its survivors when the ancient steamships remains are found in the ocean. As she begins to unearth the stories of those who were on the Pulaski, she finds the Longstreets, a family of eleven who boarded the ship together, with only a few surviving. Her research leads her to discover that their history is tied with her own tragedy–the loss of her best friend to a catastrophic accident. As she researches the Longstreets, especially Augusta and Lily, Everly must face the pain she’s endured and the guilt she still carries, paralleled in the lives of Augusta and Lily. She processes this pain and must decide if she can still endure.
“Tragedy—it can come from anywhere at any time. How do we go through life knowing that? How did we ever not know it? And yet we pretend we’re safe. It’s absurd.”
With the story told mostly from Everly’s perspective but with glimpses of Augusta’s and Lily’s points of view as they escaped the wreckage of the Pulaski, it is a moving exploration of how tragedy changes you. For some, including one of the Longstreet survivors, it can lead you into a horrible version of yourself, to make choices that destroy your life and the lives of others. But for others, you can make the decision to endure pain and not just survive it, but endure.
Patti Callahan Henry is a master storyteller. She uses such rich imagery throughout the book–the most significant character in this novel is probably the ocean, which takes on a life of its own. Her writing style is so evocative, powerful, and emotional, and it’s what I love best about her. I also really enjoyed Everly putting together this historical display and the hunting down of facts, plus the way it tied into her own personal life. It was intriguing! At times, I didn’t care for the flashbacks to Lily and Augusta. They made the story feel choppy, and I think just one of their perspectives might have been sufficient to capture just how horrific the explosion was. I also struggled with the glorification of the Old South, and I didn’t feel that the novel addressed slavery until the end of the novel although it did make strides at that point. The Old South was based on slavery–that’s where its wealth and “glory” came from, and so much of the beginning of the novel seemed to act like it was a wonderful place. I really did not like that in the beginning especially. Overall, however, this was an excellent book, especially for the richness of the description and writing. If you enjoy historical fiction with some mystery and personal reflection and a very evocative setting, this book is for you!
Those bits and pieces of myself, of everyone, could be retrieved and examined; their stories could be told. If I took the time, if I looked closely enough, if I dove deep enough, I could find my own wreckage and honor it.
4/5
The Bookish Persuasion 