Fire in the water : a novel / by James Alexander Thom.
Material type:
TextLanguage: English Publisher: Indianapolis, Indiana : Blue River Press, [2015]Copyright date: ©2015Description: 367 pages : illustrations ; 24 centimetersContent type: - text
- unmediated
- volume
- 9781935628569 (hardcover)
- 1935628569 (hardcover)
- Sultana (Steamboat) -- Fiction
- Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865 -- Funeral journey to Springfield -- Fiction
- Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865 -- Death and burial -- Fiction
- Mississippi River -- Fiction
- United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Prisoners and prisons -- Fiction
- Reporters and reporting -- Fiction
| Item type | Home library | Collection | Call number | Materials specified | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Adult Book
|
Main Library | Fiction | Thom, James | Available | 33111008331718 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
Paddy Quinn, "the boy who ate rattlesnakes" and lost a hand to a cannon blast during the Mexican War, returns as a famous Civil War correspondent and battlefield sketch artist, in James Alexander Thom's new novel, Fire in the Water . Thom is a prize-winning historical novelist, and author of the New York Times bestseller Follow the River .
The central action in Fire in the Water is the tragic explosion and burning of the paddlewheel steamboat SULTANA near Memphis in the last days of the Civil War, killing some 1,800 homebound Yankee survivors of the hellish Andersonville prisoner-of-war camp in Geor¬gia.
But the undercurrent of the novel is the national mourning for assas¬sinated President Lincoln, whose corpse was en route on his funeral train to Springfield, Illinois at the time of the disaster. War correspon¬dent Quinn, newly wed in New Orleans, is on board the SULTANA with his bride, assigned to report and illustrate Lincoln's funeral and burial for Harper's Weekly.
When Quinn and an Indiana-born prison survivor he's interviewing are blown overboard into the cold, flooded Mississippi by the mid¬night boiler explosion, it is their grit and resourcefulness, but mostly their vow to get to Lincoln's funeral, that keep them alive as hundreds perish around them in the flame-lit night.
For famous one-armed war correspondent Paddy Quinn, this is to be his final Civil War assignment: the funeral of the assassinated President Lincoln. Quinn and his new bride Felice are aboard the steamboat Sultana going up the spring-flooded Mississippi River toward Illinois to meet the Funeral Train, when their honeymoon vessel stops at Vicksburg and takes on a pathetic human cargo of 2,000 sick and ragged survivors of the hellish Andersonville prisoner-of-war camp, kept alive only by their desire to get home. Quinn's lot is now thrown in with some of the unluckiest veterans of that awful war. While he is interviewing them about life in the notorious prison, the Sultana, carrying five times its lawful number of passengers, explodes after midnight. Quinn is blown overboard with the emaciated veteran Robb Macombie, and in the worst night of his life proves himself a better man than he had ever imagined he could be. In this narrative of America's worst maritime disaster, the deepest undercurrent is the spirit of the martyred President, whom Quinn and Macombie have vowed to honor by attending his funeral even if it kills them.
Illustrations by James Alexander Thom.