The Whispering Bookworm: On tour with The Coffee Pot Book Club: Sisters of the Sweetwater Fury by Kinley Bryan #HistoricalFiction #BlogTour #CoffeePotBookClub @kinleybauthor @maryanneyarde

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.

What inspired you to start writing?

As a child, I filled notebooks with poetry styled after Shel Silverstein and wrote plays that I persuaded my brothers to perform with me. In college, I majored in English, interned at the university press, and had a part-time job as a writing tutor. Upon graduation I looked for a job that involved lots of writing. I remember interviewing for a PR job and the interviewer asked, somewhat incredulously, if I would be okay if most of my workday was spent writing. I thought that would be ideal! But it wasn’t until I was working in corporate communications that I started to believe I had a special skill for writing. When my supervisor encouraged me to give fiction a try, it was the push I needed.

What was the hardest part about writing this book?

The most time-consuming part was getting the setting right. For Sisters of the Sweetwater Fury, this meant learning all about early 20th century straight deck freighters. More than half of the story takes place on a lake freighter, and so in writing each scene, I had to determine what was plausible given the design and construction of these great vessels. Fortunately, I enjoy research. Writing historical fiction allows me to delve into topics that take me to another place and time.

Does one of the main characters hold a special place in your heart? If so, why?

My novel centers on three sisters: their relationships and their struggle to survive the storm. They are trying to make the most of their lives, to find their way in a world that offers them limited options. They are trying to figure out how to deal with the frustration that results from this. Each of the three sisters reflects a part of me in some way. I hope readers see themselves in these characters as well.

If your book was to be made into a movie, who are the celebrities that would star in it?

The main characters are the three sisters: Agnes, Sunny, and Cordelia. As I wrote scenes with Agnes, a lifesaver’s widow who lives in a small town on Lake Huron, I would envision Toni Collette. The middle sister, Sunny, is a no-nonsense, often sharp-tongued galley cook who holds her own among a crew of men; I could easily imagine Kirsten Dunst playing the role. And Cordelia, the youngest sister, newly married to a freighter captain, is idealistic and romantic—I would love to see Elizabeth Olsen as Cordelia.

What do you hope your readers take away from this book?

One thing that’s delighted me from the reviews so far is that readers have said the novel takes them back to a time they spent on or near the Great Lakes. I love this and hope other readers have a similar experience. For readers unfamiliar with the Great Lakes, I hope the book intrigues them enough that they want to visit one day! But I also hope the story resonates with people—women and men—who struggle with the expectations others have of them. That struggle, for me, is the heart of the story. In any case, I hope Sisters of the Sweetwater Fury provides a fun and thrilling escape to another place and time.

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Kinley Bryan

Kinley Bryan is an Ohio native who counts numerous Great Lakes captains among her ances-tors. 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 in-land 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.

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