Take a riveting journey on an 18-th century British warship in David Grann’s harrowing story of survival, “The Wager — A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder”. Grann, a writer for The New Yorker and National Book Award finalist for “Killers of the Flower Moon”, has an extraordinary ability to make history read like a thriller.
He ventures back to colonial times when the British were mobilizing against Imperial Spain. Scrambling to scrounge up crews for their fleets to battle the Spaniards and capture their bounty, the Navy even resorted to kidnapping youngsters off the street and taking invalids from infirmaries on stretchers as reluctant sailors. The “wooden world” of ships was a study in contrasts. Uniformed officers slept in private berths, the captain’s quarters had sleeping chambers, while seamen below deck were crammed in with rats as bedmates.
In September 1740, the HMS Wager set sail, but becomes separated from its fleet. After a devastating hurricane on the high seas, it’s wrecked off the coast of Patagonia, at the tip of South America. Already having survived scurvy, loss of limbs, and constant hunger, the crew’s ordeal continues as the castaways are now faced with starvation.
Factions form in their efforts to survive. Two key players emerge with opposing ideas on how to move forward. In January 1742, 30 withered men sailed 3,000 miles in a cobbled together vessel and land on the coast of Brazil. They tell an epic story of survival. Six months later, three more of the castaways wash up off the coast of Chile, with a gripping tale of treachery.
With conflicting accounts of what happened, the survivors lodge counter charges against each other. Was there a murder? Or was there a mutiny? The Admiralty convenes a trial and in the end there’s a court-martial and an unexpected verdict. The aftermath of Grann’s extensive research is a well-told story that evokes an indictment of Britain’s framing of history, and the narrative told in the name of the Empire.
In both Ann Patchett’s and Michael Cunningham’s latest novels, the Covid-19 pandemic plays a role. In Patchett’s “Tom Lake”, it’s the reason three daughters of cherry farmers are brought back together with their parents, filling the labor void left by the shutdown. The mother, pressed by her daughters, recalls her youthful career and romance with a famous actor, prompting the sisters to consider their own hopes and happiness as well as their relationships with her.
While “Tom Lake” doesn’t meet the level of Patchett’s last tour de force, “The Dutch House”, or the beauty of “Bel Canto”, her literary ability to tell moving stories with insights into life, family, and love is assuredly on display here.
Pulitzer Prize-winning (“The Hours”) author Michael Cunningham’s first novel in a decade, “Day”, is due out in late fall. It takes place on three separate April days, in 2019, 2020, and 2021, set before and during the pandemic. Focusing on a tale of a unique domestic unit, a brother and sister and her husband and two kids living together in New York City. When the world goes into lockdown, existing family fissures are intensified. Cunningham delivers an affecting story of a couple reckoning with their waning love, a family dealing with a terrible loss, while also reminding us how, beyond survival, we all dream of a life of happiness.
