Reviews
This was a really fascinating fictionalized tale of survival on the Great Lakes: the story of the Asia. I hadn't known anything about shipwrecks on the lakes before reading this so it was nice to learn about. I liked the survival story, but I couldn't really connect with the characters and didn't think the romance added much to the story. If anyone wants to learn about a relatively unknown piece of Canadian history, this is a quick historical read to go for.
I got a galley of this through netgalley I found this book to be quiet boring. However, it is a really quick read and I really liked the writting. full review: https://jelkelenaerts.blogspot.be/201...
Seventeen-year-old Christina McBurney, grieving the loss of her twin brother, Jonathan, to consumption, has run away from her Parkdale home. She believes her mother wishes she had been the one to die, and she plans to find work far away as a nursemaid or teacher. Christina's cousin Peter is the first mate on the Asia, a steamship that transports passengers and freight throughout the Great Lakes, so she seeks him out to secure passage to Sault Ste. Marie. But when a violent storm suddenly rises, the overloaded and top-heavy steamship begins to sink. Christina, heeding the warnings from her cousin, somehow makes her way to the hurricane deck. A large wave tosses her overboard, but just before she loses consciousness, she is pulled to safety. Hours later, adrift on the wide-open water of Georgian Bay, in a lifeboat full of corpses, Christina is nervous about being alone with Daniel, a brooding young man with a likely criminal past and the only other passenger left alive. But they both know that working together is the only way they will find the strength to make it to safety. Big Water is a fictional account of the real-life story of the only two survivors of the sinking of the SS Asia in 1882. Upon reading the summary for this book, I immediately thought of both Titanic and Salt to the Sea, and considering how much I love both of those stories, I knew I would love this one too. It astounds me that I haven’t seen it around much anywhere and that more people don’t know about it, and I suspect that this is because it takes place in Canada, and sometimes we fall off the radar. We start off with Christina on the Asia, immediately prior to the ship’s wrecking. Now, I don’t know much about what passenger ships look like, having never been on one myself (and certainly not one from 1882), but the description of the ship and Christina’s surroundings seemed very realistic. I found it a bit funny that there were cows and horses on the ship’s main deck though. I did have to go back and reread the first few pages, because it wasn’t immediately obvious to me that they were in a storm. I wasn’t expecting the story to jump right into the wreck and instead was expecting a little bit of build-up at least. Pretty quickly we find our characters on the lifeboat though, and try not to get too attached to Peter because spoiler alert, he is not the other survivor of the wreckage. At first, I didn’t quite make the connection between Daniel on the lifeboat and Daniel on the ship, and I think this is because when reading the section in which Christina witnesses Daniel’s argument with another man, you don’t realise that this is an introduction and not just something she happens to notice. I did find myself wishing that the book included a picture of the ship, and/or of Lake Huron/Georgian Bay - not being familiar with the Great Lakes, when I think bay I think of a small body of water, not a huge one that is more like a sea, really. But that’s just my own naivety I suppose. I found the scenes in the lifeboat to be quite realistic as well, and I’ve read a ton of Titanic fiction that takes place in lifeboats, so I was impressed. It did go a bit slow at times when the two characters were still paddling to nowhere trying to find land - but it’s not as if there’s a way, in a book based on a true story, to make that terribly exciting. I found it really well written when both Christina and Daniel were experiencing the mental effects of the wreck, the cold, and the trauma their bodies were sustaining. It’s not as if one can remain alert and entirely clear-headed in these kinds of environments. One of the best things I though the book did though was illustrate the pain and grief that Christina was going through in the loss of her brother. It kept her conscious, and I suspect that in some way, Daniel reminded her of her brother and that was partially how she was able to keep him alive. The best section of the book was definitely when they were finally rescued by the indigenous couple. I felt a huge sigh of relief when their struggles were finally over. Even though they were referred to as Indians in the text, I really appreciated in the Author’s Note at the end when she explains why she used that language, and how it has evolved into non-usage in modern day. In fact the whole Author’s Note I appreciated, because it really illustrated the effort the author took in her research to make the story as accurate as possible. I wish the story didn’t end on such an ambiguous note though. I know that it might be a bit too far to expect Christina and Daniel to get married, but I don’t want to believe that they can experience what they went through and not have an eternal intimate connection. It reminded me of the quote from Harry Potter where you can’t knock out a troll together and not end up being friends. Even if their life paths would take them in different directions, I do wish we would have gotten a peek at what happened to them next. There is a quote at end though that I really loved, where Christina rises above her trauma to face her future. It might change in the final copy when it’s published, but I really hope it doesn’t, because it’s a beautiful ending to a beautiful story: “But I know now that I am large. I contain big water, big sky. For I have held a person in my arms as he died, found solace in the wind and sky, scared away wild animals with laughter. I have watched kindness and determination and grief exist at the same time in the same face. Maybe I will forge my own path, like Daniel said. Become a scientist or a teacher. Or maybe I’ll marry a farmer and live a quiet life in a quiet town and have babies and grandbabies, make jam in the summer and pickles in the fall. Maybe I’ll travel the ocean, or maybe I’ll never set another foot on a boat. I might never again hold someone’s hand and face the unknown together, frightened and defiant and alive. Or I might. I just might.” Also, the cover art for this book is STUNNING. I am in love. I received an ARC from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
