Review ~ Blog Tour ~ The Luckiest Thirteen by Brian Lavery.

 

The Luckiest Thirteen tells of an even starker high-seas adventure, when the world’s top supertrawler becomes a fireball off the coast of Newfoundland. This is Christmas Day, 1966. Families back in Hull raise glasses to their loved ones while fire sweeps the decks and rescue boats are hurled through storm seas. Brilliantly told, this story is as gripping as they come.

Review

I would like to thank the author, publisher and blog tour organiser for the ARC in return for an honest review.

I know some people might look at this book about the fight to save the trawler St Finbarr and wonder if it is for them. Well I would recommend it one hundred percent, because it’s a fascinating and emotional account of a long forgotten event that deserves to be remembered.

.Social history is a absorbing subject and this is one of the best examples I have read in quite some time. It avoids a lot of the technical issues surrounding events and focuses on the people involved in the tragedy and pays homage to the events with a keen eye for the dramatic nature of the battle faced by those survivors on the trawler. The writer gives the account emotional impact by allowing us to see events through the accounts of those involved. We hear the stories of the families, those that had to tell them whether their loved ones were alive or had perished and about the enquiry into the sinking. It’s an emotional read, but the writer isn’t exploiting the memories of those involved, this is not sensationalist, it is an intelligent, wonderfully informative account of events.

I would recommend his book to all readers of social history and those with a love of everything to do with our coastal fleets.

It will definitely be featuring in my top ten non-fiction reads for 2018.

 

You can purchase this book from Amazon

About the author

Brian W. Lavery is a former national newsman, whose tales deliver true journalistic flair. Born in Glasgow, long resident in Hull, he writes with a deep knowledge of the community and the dangers faced by those working in extremes. He has a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Hull.

You can follow the author on Twitter