Let us Talk of Many Things; of Books and Queens and Pirates, of Mystery and Kings...: My Coffee Pot Guest Kinley Bryan and Sisters of the Sweetwater Fury

Welcome to my Blog!
Wander through wonderful worlds
real and fictional,
meet intereting people,
visit exciting places
and find a few good books
to enjoy along the way!

Sisters of the Sweetwater Fury

By Kinley Bryan

“Somehow it is true that nearly every great thing associated with the [Great] Lakes is unusual in some way—unusual to an astonishing degree,” wrote American action-adventure writer and conservationist James Oliver Curwood in The Great Lakes (1909); he went on to lament the lack of literature about the Lakes. Over one hundred years later I, too, am surprised at how little the Great Lakes feature in popular culture, and I’m excited to share with readers the beauty, the grandeur, and also the terrible ferocity of these vast inland freshwater seas.

My historical novel, Sisters of the Sweetwater Fury, is set during the Great Lakes Storm of November 7-11, 1913. In the days leading up to the storm, three sisters—Sunny, Cordelia, and Agnes—are struggling with personal dilemmas related to society’s expectations of them. Each sister’s struggle is different, and each sister is in a different place, emotionally. As the worst storm in a century descends on the region, the sisters must weather the storm from different places, geographically. Sunny, Cordelia, and Agnes are hundreds of miles apart, in fact—such was the massive scope of this storm.

The Great Lakes
as seen from space
Photo courtesy of SeaWiFS Project,
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center,
and ORBIMAGE, Public domain,
via Wikimedia Commons

Sunny, a ship’s cook, faces the fury from the hustle and bustle of the galley on a 500-foot straight deck freighter. The vessels are unique to the Great Lakes, with their long flat middle and two “houses” on either end—the pilothouse at the bow and the boilerhouse at the stern. The cargo, often iron ore or coal, is held in the middle, poured in through the rectangular openings, or hatches, that line the deck from the pilothouse to the boilerhouse. In 1913, the only way to get from one end of the freighter to the other was to cross a football field’s length of open deck; there was no below-deck passageway for the crew.

In those days, the few women employed on lake freighters likely worked in the galley as a cook. The galley was located in the boilerhouse at the stern of the ship, as was the mess room, officers’ dining room, and the crew’s sleeping quarters. Below the boilerhouse, the enormous engine occupied several levels. While Sunny’s straight deck freighter is a fictional one, it was inspired by a real-life vessel that encountered the 1913 storm. To capture the feeling of what it might have been like on a freighter in the early 20^th century, I read first-hand accounts of sailors who survived the storm. I also found accounts written by the occasional passenger who rode along in better weather. There are places around the Great Lakes where you can tour a lake freighter, such as the Valley Camp in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan and the William G. Mather in Cleveland, Ohio (pictured).

William G Mather
Photo courtesy of Michael Bryan

Cordelia, the youngest sister in my novel, has just married a freighter captain, and is joining him on the season’s last trip up the lakes, from Cleveland to Duluth. Unlike Sunny, who lives and works at the stern, Cordelia finds herself in the pilothouse at the ship’s bow. There she stays in the captain’s quarters, with its clawfoot tub and dark wood paneling and checkerboard-tile floor. She and her captain husband encounter the storm on Lake Superior, near its eastern end. It’s a treacherous area. Waves bounce off the rocky coastline and combine with waves headed for the shore and the result is the formation of these tremendous monster waves. It’s in this part of Lake Superior that the Edmund Fitzgerald sank almost 50 years ago.

Agnes, the oldest sister, is on land when the storm hits. She lives in a lakeside town at the tip of Michigan’s Thumb. From her pale yellow cottage, she has a view of Lake Huron and its incredible vastness. One of the wondrous things about the Great Lakes is that from the shore, the water looks as expansive as any ocean. For Agnes, I drew on my experience living in an old cottage on Lake Erie. I loved watching the lake change from season to season. In the winter, the lake’s southern half froze and snow blanketed the surface as far as you could see. Lake currents created these great, crumpled ice formations at the shore. In the darkest of winter an eerie howl raced across the partially frozen lake.

Lake Erie winter
Photo courtesy of Mike Bryan

In the spring, the ice and snow melted and lake freighters began to appear. They were miles offshore, hazy and hovering on the horizon as if they weren’t moving—and from that distance, silent, so it was always a little surprise to see one. I would wonder about the people on board: who they were, what their lives were like. I would think of my great-grandfather, who in the early 1900s was a schooner captain on the Great Lakes (my great-grandmother was the ship’s cook). Summers on Lake Erie brought warm breezes and sailboat races, the crew’s voices traveling across the water to where I sat on the porch, so distinct they might have been next door. And in the fall came the storms: churning dark water, combers crashing against rocks, freshening wind. When a wave hit the shore just right, the cottage would shake as if from a small earthquake.

I hope readers find Sisters of the Sweetwater Fury to be an immersive experience. I want them to feel like they’re in the heart of the Great Lakes Storm of 1913, with its mountainous waves, freight-train wind, and whiteout blizzard conditions. This was a storm unlike any other, so much so that a hundred years later people were still writing nonfiction accounts of it. I hope readers enjoy my fictional take on the fury.

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.

Buy Links:

Universal Link: https://books2read.com/sweetwaterfury

Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B09HY4P5ZB

Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09HY4P5ZB

Amazon CA: https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B09HY4P5ZB

Amazon AU: https://www.amazon.com.au/gp/product/B09HY4P5ZB

Barnes and Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/sisters-of-the-sweetwater-fury-kinley-bryan/1140325821

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/sisters-of-the-sweetwater-fury

iBooks:

https://books.apple.com/gb/book/sisters-of-the-sweetwater-fury/id1589941489

About the author

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.

Social Media Links:

Website: kinleybryan.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/kinleybauthor#

Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/Kinley-Bryan/e/B09J5GWDLX

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59240907