Surviving Savannah by Patti Callahan is Youngest’s book group selection for June 2025.
The beauty of reading along with her group is they pick interesting books, it gives me discussion topics with her and my husband, it gives him diverse books. Her group gets a real kick that we read along.
I liked this book a lot. The author did a great job with her fictional characters aboard this real disaster.
This historical fiction book is based on fictional characters during a real event, the sinking of the steamship Pulaski after a boiler explosion.
There are three story lines and two timelines. One timeline is current day Savannah, Georgia. The other two story lines are 200 years in the past.
I may have mentioned, my husband’s 2x great grandfather (on his paternal side, age 38, married with 6 kids, 5 living, German immigrant) was killed during the Civil War via a steamship boiler explosion. So killed that there were no remains. Steamship explosions were a very real event.
I had to look at two maps to remember Georgia has an eastern coastline, south of Charleston, South Carolina.
I maintain accounts on GoodReads and StoryGraph, thanks to youngest getting me organized.
StoryGraph -
In each book post, I utilize https://www.bookseriesinorder.com/
This is a wonderful website that helps clarify the publication order of books and verifies book series. I use this website because there are no spoilers. But if I need a description, I can click over using the links, easily. There are also author bios.
