Read my review of Sisters of the Sweetwater Fury by Kinley Bryan #HistoricalFiction #BlogTour #CoffeePotBookClub @kinleybauthor @maryanneyarde

Sisters of the Sweetwater Fury

By Kinley Bryan

Three sisters. Two Great Lakes. One furious storm.

Based on actual events...

It's 1913 and Great Lakes galley cook Sunny Colvin has her hands full feeding a freighter crew seven days a week, nine months a year. She also has a dream—to open a restaurant back home—but knows she'd never convince her husband, the steward, to leave the seafaring life he loves.

In Sunny’s Lake Huron hometown, her sister Agnes Inby mourns her husband, a U.S. Life-Saving Serviceman who died in an accident she believes she could have prevented. Burdened with regret and longing for more than her job at the dry goods store, she looks for comfort in a secret infatuation.

Two hundred miles away in Cleveland, youngest sister Cordelia Blythe has pinned her hopes for adventure on her marriage to a lake freighter captain. Finding herself alone and restless in her new town, she joins him on the season’s last trip up the lakes.

On November 8, 1913, a deadly storm descends on the Great Lakes, bringing hurricane-force winds, whiteout blizzard conditions, and mountainous thirty-five-foot waves that last for days. Amidst the chaos, the women are offered a glimpse of the clarity they seek, if only they dare to perceive it.

Publication Date: 12th October 2021

Publisher: Blue Mug Press

Page Length: 324 Pages

Genre: Historical Fiction

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MY THOUGHTS

In her day-to-day life as a galley cook, Sunny Colvin works hard and is a beloved crew member for the food that she makes. Hers is the kind of ship that people clamour to be on, for they know that as a part of that crew, they will be well fed. But, in her private life, Sunny has a secret. She would like to go ashore, to not return to the crew of the Titus Brown, but to run a restaurant, where she can serve all the things she loves to make.

Agnes Inby, Sunny’s older sister, is living in her hometown on Lake Huron, looking after her mother, and putting up with the life she has been left with. Her husband died working as a Life-Saving Serviceman, and she is the only one left at home to look after her mother, a job that she wishes she did not have, for it seems that, in her mother’s eyes, she can do nothing right. But, with the friendship with the family of Keeper Duncan, the new leader of the U.S. Live-Saving Serviceman, Agnes sees new opportunities opening before her.

Cordelia Blythe, the youngest sister, ran away from home to marry a ship captain. And, she is determined to get to know him. Despite knowing he will be working, Cordelia insists on accompanying him on his last trip of the season, viewing it as a honeymoon for the pair of them. She has always felt alone, and spending time with her new husband is something she is eager to do. Plus, with him being the captain of the ship, she will have status aboard and views the whole thing as an adventure.

November on the Great Lakes was known for its storms, for it was an unpredictable time of year on the water. When a storm hits, everyone thinks it will blow over quickly, like so many of the other storms they have experienced, but when it doesn’t let up, and instead, grows deadly, the three sisters quickly realise that this storm isn’t like the others they have seen – this one is the kind of storm that changes lives forever.

This is the kind of book that reminds you why you love reading. The characters live and breathe within the pages, and the author has so clearly spent hours and hours researching to make this book as accurate as possible. The pure devastation, and the fear, have been depicted with incredible skill, and I was almost certain I was living the events alongside the characters, rather than simply reading them from words on a page. Not many novels have left me reeling quite so much as this one did. I poured over the author’s note at the end, and went on to research this era more, trying to find out all I could about the Great Lakes and the storm of 1913. This book left me desperate to find anything else the author has written, simply to gush over that as well.

My favourite character, of the three sisters, was certainly Sunny. This is nothing against Agnes and Cordelia, but Sunny was a character I could not get enough of, and her story was nothing if not suspenseful and dramatic. She is such a brave woman, not because she doesn’t feel fear, but because she pushes her own fear aside to make sure the other members of the crew are not afraid. She is incredibly hardworking, and it seems that, in desperate times, she is the person who will go above and beyond to make sure everything is running as smoothly and normally as possible, even in dire situations. Sunny is a character based on a real-life woman, and this novel is not fictitious but based on real events. It only takes a moment to think about being stuck in a situation like any of the sisters to realise how utterly terrifying it would have been to live through this storm, and even then, I am not sure I could ever truly imagine the horrors the sisters in this book, and everyone fighting the storm, faced.

While Sunny was my favourite character, Cordelia and Agnes have also found a place in my heart. I don’t want to give any spoilers, but with a book about a deadly storm, and three sisters all tied up in it, there is destruction and, with as deadly as this storm was, there is heartbreak. And I mean the kind of words that you read that physically grab your heart and crush it. The way this book has been written constantly keeps you on edge as you read, and it is absolutely impossible to put down.

There are some authors in this world, who write so amazingly, that you are sucked into the story and you truly feel unhappy every moment you are away from the book. This is one of those books. It feels like something has been added to your life, and when you have finished reading it, a chunk of your heart is missing, because this book had become such an integral part of your life. The only problem is, with most of these kinds of books, you can then buy every book the author has written, and read them as well. This is the author’s debut novel, and it has only just come out. I do not know if the author is planning on writing anything else, but I am certain that, if she does, I will be one of the first to buy it, and devour it as I devoured this one.

Kinley Bryan is an Ohio native who counts numerous Great Lakes captains among her ancestors. Her great-grandfather Walter Stalker was captain of the four-masted schooner Golden Age, the largest sailing vessel in the world when it launched in 1883. Kinley’s love for the inland seas swelled during the years she spent in an old cottage on Lake Erie. She now lives with her husband and children on the Atlantic Coast, where she prefers not to lose sight of the shore. Sisters of the Sweetwater Fury is her first novel.

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