This was a return at the library that caught my eye. I've always been interested in history, and more recently, maritime history about New England. In the Wake of Madness by Joan Druett seemed like the intriguing story of a tragedy that befell a whaleship in the far Pacific Ocean.
The write up inside the cover suggested that this book would be the first to answer the question, what really happened the night the captain of the Sharon was killed, and who really were the murderers. I got hooked into the idea that the three Pacific Islanders that were left alone on the ship would turn out to be framed by the predominantly white crew and that there was a much deeper story to the murder. Without ruining the book, I can say that I was disappointed with the big "reveal" because it didn't really clarify the points that the author was claiming to clarify, but did give a lot of insight into the social hierarchy of whalemen and their the brutal conditions that people were forced to serve in. Remember, these ships are far out at sea away from any American workers laws, and usually relied upon young naive men or foreigners looking for adventure to fill up the empty spaces in the whaleboats. When these ships finally return to port its almost like a Fight Club-esque scenario: "The First Rule about Sailing is you don't talk about Sailing".
Even though I was somewhat let down at the end of the tale, this book is a quick, enjoyable read that would be of interest to history buffs and fiction lovers alike. It isn't a long academic tract about whaling, its written much more like Nathaniel Philbrick or Erik Larson. I'd call it popular nonfiction or microhistory, but I think the technical term is more like "creative nonfiction". This doesn't mean the facts are skewed or the story is made up, but unlike a history book you'd read for a college class, this one doesn't have a thousand footnotes or dry repetitive text. It focuses on such a narrow subject matter that it becomes a self contained and doesn't require as much of the history that David Hackett Fischer would include. In order to help make this type of narrative flow, there is a lot of created dialog or personal impressions that help to connect the reader to the emotions of the people who are being described. The author probably doesn't know exactly what the captain or the ship's carpenter was thinking at a specific moment, but she could make a pretty good assumption based on ship's logs, letters, and journal entries.
In addition, the author added chapter guides at the end of the book that gave more of the nitty gritty that was missing from the narrative, broken down by chapter, and included many of her references and the repositories that she visited.
Seadogs and landlubbers alike would enjoy this book if you're looking for a good mystery and like a bit of adventure thrown in. Its not as crazy a tale as Clive Cussler's Sahara, but in a way the journey of the Sharon draws you along in a similar manner. Both types of stories rely heavily on places and strong personalities to engage the reader, and its even more astounding to think about when you realize that Captain Howes Norris was really alive and was really brutally murdered by his own men. There is just this wow factor when you step away from it that you wouldn't get with Cussler. Also if you hated Moby Dick when you read it in school, or have waited to pick it up in fear of the 100 pages that just describe the white whale, then maybe you should give this one a try. Herman Melville apparently described a similar route followed by the Sharon in his novel and would have heard the rumors surrounding the murder of this deranged, solitary captain during his own travels.
