First published 2016
The Downs family sleeps peacefully aboard the freighter Heredia as it travels through the Gulf of Mexico in May 1942. Fifty miles from New Orleans, German U-boat commander Erich Wurdemann tracks the merchant vessel through his periscope. The twenty-nine-year-old decorated officer fires two torpedoes at the ship carrying sixty-two passengers and crew. When the Heredia explodes, Ray and Ina Downs and their children Sonny and Lucille are thrown into the dark waters. Each family member must find their own way to survive. They face sharks circling in the gulf, their body temperatures dropping in the cold water, and the constant threat of drowning. Dehydration weakens them as hours pass without rescue. The story follows both the family's desperate struggle in the water and Commander Wurdemann's tactical decisions aboard his submarine. This account of survival against overwhelming odds reveals how ordinary people respond when death seems certain.
Genres: historical-fiction, 20th-century, adventure, military-history
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: against-all-odds, based-on-true-events
Setting: Gulf of Mexico, New Orleans
Period: May 1942
263 pages · Kindle Edition · Pegasus Books
Content warnings: death, violence