Kinley Bryan

Three sisters attempt to navigate the rocky shoals of family relationships - until the Great Lakes Storm of 1913 descends upon the region, threatening their dreams and even their lives.

Sisters of the Sweetwater Fury

1864: As Sherman’s army marches toward Atlanta, a cotton mill commandeered by the Confederacy lies in its path. Inside the mill, Clara Douglas weaves cloth and watches over her sister Kitty, waiting for the day her fiancé returns from the West. When Sherman’s troops raid the town and destroy the mill, Clara’s plans to start a new life in Nebraska are threatened. Branded as traitors by the Federals, Clara, Kitty, and countless others are exiled to a desolate refugee prison hundreds of miles from home. Cut off from everything they've ever known, Clara clings to hope while grappling with doubts about her fiancé’s ambitions and the unsettling truths surrounding his absence. As the days pass, the sisters find themselves thrust onto the foreign streets of Cincinnati, a city teeming with uncertainty and hostility. She must summon reserves of courage, ingenuity, and strength she didn’t know she had if she and Kitty are to survive in an unfamiliar, unwelcoming land. Inspired by true events of the American Civil War’s final year, The Lost Women of Mill Street is a vividly drawn novel about the bonds of sisterhood, the strength of women, and the repercussions of war on individual lives.

The Lost Women of Mill Street

In 1913, a powerful and dangerous storm descends on the Great Lakes — and three sisters find their lives transformed amid the chaos in this "superb, character-driven adventure" (Publishers Weekly). 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, the 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 powerful storm descends on the Great Lakes, bringing hurricane-force winds, whiteout blizzard conditions, and mountainous waves that last for days. Amidst the chaos all three women are offered a glimpse of the clarity they seek, if only they dare to perceive it. Kinley Bryan's debut, a Historical Novels Review Editors' Choice, is inspired by actual events during the Great Lakes Storm of 1913, as well as her own family history. "This is historical fiction at its best" (Molly Gartland, author of The Girl from the Hermitage).

Kinley Bryan

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