Surviving Savannah

“I know this: we’re made of stories, legends and myths just as we are made of water, atoms and flesh.”

This quotation establishes one of the main beliefs that Everly holds. It illustrates how her character views the world and helps the reader gain insight into the decisions she makes and the goals she decides to pursue. While Maddox seeks to recover physical artifacts from the wreck of the Pulaski, Everly wants to recover its stories.

“Always needed but never wanted. That was how it felt to Augusta, a twenty-two-year-old single woman considered as good as a widow […] Also known as an extension of yet another man.”

Augusta’s character is concisely described in this quotation. She is a single woman who is consigned to the background even of her own life. The reader is given a clear understanding of the role Augusta has played and how she wants to change.

“No one, even if they believe they have, moves past the past. It follows; it shadows; it breathes quietly in the dark corners. Ask me, I know.”

Here Callahan explains that the past is always with us. This quotation also reflects Everly’s sense that the past is a monstrous, living being, something that will never go away and should be accepted instead of avoided.

“Lilly reached for her silk jewelry bag. She handed her distressed child to Priscilla so she could tie the bag around her wrist—she would not leave without her valuables; they could mean freedom. She knew this even in the depth of fear.”

This quotation characterizes Lilly: She understands that she needs to be practical and consider her long-term needs to survive. The reader learns that, even with her mind clouded by terror, Lilly remembers to take her valuables in case she needs them.

“What I’m looking for is someone who understands that what we bring up from below changes things about. I’m looking for someone who can help me show that the past and its stories are important even now.”

This statement by Maddox reinforces the novel’s theme of storytelling and its importance to the plot. He explains to Everly what he needs in a curator. It shows that he has the same values she does, and she can put her trust in him to have the same perspective.

“Heat, as searing as if the sun had fallen onto the ship and was radiating through the hallways and under the doorframes, blew into the room like the breath of the beast. She stood frozen in fear. An eerie silence pervaded—the engine had stopped and the great wheels had stilled.”

This quotation describes the Pulaski immediately after the explosion. By describing the heat as bestial, Callahan evokes the ferocity of the moment. The vivid imagery in this section makes the characters’ experiences more visceral to the reader. It also gives the reader a better understanding of what Augusta feels, making the moment more intense by building suspense and terror.

“This is a memorial to Lilly Forsyth and all those who suffered when the Pulaski sank. She was rumored to have survived but was never seen again. Since we don’t have a list of all those who lived, her survival could be a myth; just one woman to represent the horror of that night.”

Everly is introducing Lilly Forsyth to Maddox, evoking the storytelling theme. This quotation also enhances the mystery of Lilly Forsyth and gives the reader their first clue that the Pulaski shipwreck isn’t like others. It does not have definitive records of who lived and died.

“Hell, on that manifest, women don’t even have first names. But here she stands, representing all that was lost, and all the mystery surrounding the wreck.”

This quotation encapsulates the frustration that Everly experiences studying women’s history. The fact that many of the passengers on the Pulaski did not have their full names on record obscures who they were. It is initially difficult for Everly to determine what is myth and what is fact.

“The rich. The poor. The indentured servants. The Negroes. The engineers and Captain Dubois and officers—they were all the same now. Humans desperate to be saved.”

Lilly’s interpretation of the events is clear. She’s watching the societal barriers crumble in the face of tragedy and disaster. This quotation establishes that the status quo is gone; this story has reached its point of no return, and Lilly cannot go back to who she was.

“Priscilla began to recite a prayer in a language that Lilly had heard only when she’d visited the slave cabins and they hadn’t yet seen her, a language so melodic and pure that she felt sure if God existed, he heard Priscilla.”

This quotation is key to Lilly’s character arc. By referring to Priscilla’s heritage language as “melodic and pure” instead of other terms one might have expected from an enslaver, Lilly shows a true connection to Priscilla. It also begins to introduce Lilly’s perspective on fate, God’s existence, and to whom He listens.

“I was lonely, not for a man in a warm bed, but with the knowledge that in the end, and in the middle and beginning, we are alone. The love that comes and goes in our lives is just a momentary reprieve. It was dangerous to want to be near Oliver so much. I’d confused love before. I damn sure wasn’t going to do it again.”

This quotation illustrates Everly’s perspective on love and companionship and how grief and trauma have informed it. It indicates where Everly starts her character arc. She is unable to believe that love is something to rely on or is permanent. She sees love as something that will lead to pain that she wants to avoid.

“Family had always possessed a gravitational force field, part love, part obligation, mixed with the usual petty irritations and the bonds of an intimately shared history.”

Familial connection is a secondary theme in Surviving Savannah. This quotation distills Callahan’s views on it as something that draws characters in and that frustrates and revitalizes them. The novel emphasizes its importance and warns that, when the connection is lost, characters like Charles and Laurel become hateful and bitter.

“They all watched in horror as the remainder of the great Pulaski sank beneath the waves with an impossibly silent slide […] Lilly considered what sank with her, and the sum of it all—human and material—was incalculable.”

This quotation clarifies why the loss of the Pulaski was so tragic. Human life and material objects—sentimental and otherwise—are taken underwater by the Pulaski. The loss is monumental and difficult to encapsulate. The characters sit in silence. Their silence emphasizes the gravity and tragedy of the moment.

“If I were to ever talk about Mora again, it would not be to a man with a black notebook and platitudes that infuriated. But looking at Maddox I saw that he, too, carried some kind of pain. Our gazes held for a moment or two, long enough for me to know that I was right […] I knew—he saw me, and I saw him.”

This quotation cements the understanding and relationship between Everly and Maddox. It shows that therapy and other methods of handling grief haven’t worked for her. She can open herself to someone who shows that they have suffered as she has.

“Nothing is truly safe. Maddox’s words followed me down the stairs. But it’s enough to try, I wanted to argue. I am doing it. Trust me, it is enough.”

This quotation illustrates a breakthrough for Everly. For much of Surviving Savannah Everly is terrified of taking a risk. Now she tries living again and risks being hurt for the potential reward of thriving.

“Lilly felt the gazes of everyone in the boat as she leaned close and touched her nursemaid. What would have seemed inappropriate only hours before now seemed as normal as the new day. There could be no pretense now, no vanity or prejudice. In this boat they were not mistress and slave but two women intent on survival.”

The moment encapsulates the antebellum South. Lilly is an enslaver in Savannah. During the Pulaski disaster, however, when societal roles have disintegrated, Lilly connects with Priscilla as a woman intent on survival like herself.

“Maybe, Everly Winthrop, we are the ones who make meaning out of the tragedies.”

This quotation brings together the major themes of Surviving Savannah. It evokes ideas of grief and guilt as well as of storytelling and fate. Maddox urges Everly to create meaning in the tragedy she experienced instead of believing it was pointless and random.

“I let my arms float and my head drop, breaking free from his sight. In my mind images floated by, broken pieces of a fragile life. What really mattered? Minutes or years passed as I searched for the answer. Finally, my heart called out: Everything. Everything matters.”

This quotation is the climax of Surviving Savannah. Everly chooses to live—to survive and thrive. She decides that not only will she live but she will also embrace everything life has to offer.

“I thought I might want to stay, but I realize that all that talk from Mom—about being born in water—this time she was right. But this time I was reborn in that water where all the others perished.”

This quotation explains the transformation Everly experiences while underwater. She faced death and overcame the temptation to give up her life for the memory of Mora—transforming herself into a new person.

“Not everyone who survives trauma becomes a better person. The idea that surviving brings everyone to a new and better place is a lie told by people who need the world to make sense. There was always a choice.”

This statement from Maddox to Everly illustrates the theme of fate and choice. By explaining that people’s lives are impacted by the choices they make and not just the traumas they faced, Surviving Savannah foregrounds the complex role people play in determining their fate.

“If I was to follow the plucky and determined women—Lilly and Augusta both—and claim them for Mora, then I had to acknowledge the Red Devil also. There was no room for picking and choosing; it was both/and.”

Everly understands that history isn’t merely about the good things people have done. It is also about the bad things. This quotation illustrates that perspective and reinforces the idea that both positive and negative events impact the present, tying into the theme of stories of the past informing the present and future.

“[T]he enslaved people who survived, the ones who were sold and resold and torn from their families, can’t go find their family tree like you and Mora; their ancestry was muddy at best and traumatic at worst. Everything about this tragedy is built on tragedy […] Give the enslaved humanity in that curation. Show them suffering and surviving; not just a name on a manifest.”

Sophie explains to Everly that even though enslaved people were barely recorded in the Pulaski documents, Everly must reveal the same nuanced and complex humanity for them as she does for the Longstreets and other white passengers. Surviving Savannah acknowledges the South’s history of slavery and the complications of finding enslaved people in the historical record to illustrate and exemplify the theme of acknowledging atrocities that some may wish to overlook.

“The life Lilly had chosen wasn’t easy, but she had come to see the precious value of a life lived on her own terms—a life of freedom for herself, her daughter, and a nursemaid she now called by her given name, Chike. They had been reborn in that sea, made anew in that water.”

Augusta’s memoir explains that Lilly and Priscilla are living on their terms, having been given a second chance at life after the Pulaski disaster. This quotation brings a sense of closure to Lilly’s storyline, as the reader unravels the mystery of her life after the wreck at the same time as Everly.