NYT Bestselling Author Patti Callahan On Writing Historical Fiction

Today’s guest is Patti Callahan, the New York Times bestselling author of fifteen novels, including the incredibly popular historical novel Becoming Mrs. Lewis (2018),  brings to life this little-known true story in her first hardcover published by Berkley. SURVIVING SAVANNAH explores the tragic explosion of the steamship Pulaski in 1838. The accident killed many passengers, including a number of Savannah’s most elite, who were journeying up north for the summer months.

Alternating between modern day and 1838 when the ship sank, Callahan weaves an intricate and evocative tale that follows Savannah residents past and present and how their lives were shaped by this shipwreck and ultimately, how survivors endure after facing such a tragedy.

As luck would have it, just a few weeks into Callahan’s research, the actual steamship Pulaski was found thirty miles off the coast of Wilmington, NC, a hundred feet deep. Callahan was given rare access to the recovery mission and the artifacts retrieved. The author used this special insight to shape details about the ship and its passengers in her novel. The characters are drawn from actual shipwreck victims and survivors, particularly the Lamar family of Savannah, who were used as the real-life inspiration for Callahan’s main characters. 

Tell us about Surviving Savannah.

Discovering untold stories is like having a great secret whispered in your ear.  And this was one of those secrets!

Surviving Savannah is inspired by the true and forgotten-to-time saga of a luxury steamship with the nickname, “The Titanic of the South”. But her real name was The Steamship Pulaski. One June night in 1838, she exploded off the coast of North Carolina while carrying the elite of Savannah and Charleston who were headed north for the summer. 

The story is told in a dual timeline with a modern-day woman named Everly Winthrop, who curates a museum exhibit for the ship’s artifacts. With her own survival of a great tragedy haunting her, she desperately wants to solve some of the mysteries, and unravel some of the myths surrounding the sinking.  

Eventually Everly’s research leads her to the family of eleven who boarded together, and the extraordinary stories of two women: a known survivor, Augusta Winthrop and her niece, Lilly Forsyth, who was never found along with her child.

I set out to not only tell you the story of the Pulaski, its passengers, and its tales of survival, but to also bestow honor on the courageous tales of women and what they did to endure in the face of tragedy. I explored the role of fate, family histories, and the myriad ways we survive the surviving.

What inspired you to write this story?

Originally I was inspired by the Pulaski tales of survival, how the city of Savannah was part of this story, and how the Lowcountry was affected by this tragedy. I was also inspired and curious about the transformation of each passenger and the ways that each survivor not only lived through the explosion, but also how they chose to live their lives after the sinking.

How, I wondered, do some come to live better lives and others turn toward bitterness and cruelty? Who do we become after such great loss?

AND then!, everything shifted because after a hundred and eighty years, along came a shipwreck hunting crew who found the remains of the Pulaski a hundred feet beneath the waves, thirty miles off the coast of Wilmington, North Carolina. While the team went deep to bring up the artifacts and treasure of this beautiful ship, I dug deep to bring up the stories.   

My exhilarating hunt for the forgotten story began. 

Surviving Savannah is based on the sinking of the ship Pulaski, which departed Savannah in 1838. How did you learn about the shipwreck?

A local friend in Bluffton, South Carolina told me about this story years ago. But I wasn’t ready to write it. And then one day I read a newspaper article about two passengers who had become myths, and realized how many untold and hidden stories lived inside this single tragedy.

The lesson here? Do not ignore the locals. And you never know where a story idea will originate so always keep the ears and eyes wide open.

What kind of research was required to write the novel? Did anything surprise you?

The research was as fascinating as it was extensive – from the archives at the Georgia Historical Center in Savannah and the Ships of the Sea Maritime Museum to books, newspaper archives, personal accounts and letters, I read everything that I could get my hands on. I devoured books on steamships and Savannah in the 1800’s. I read about the rich history of the colonization of Savannah with General Oglethorpe. I walked the streets of Savannah and visited museums and artifact collections. I interviewed shipwreck experts and became enchanted with the world of wreck salvaging and treasure hunting.

During this journey, I was surprised over and over, but one surprise that opens the novel is the true narrative about a fifteen-year-old passenger named Charles who survived the sinking to become a slave trader with a horrific reputation. As he grew into a man, he earned the nickname “the Red Devil”. How had this young boy survived to become so cruel? I wanted to know.  

Finally, after years of research, I put together a complete story of that calamitous night, and one family in particular.

Your story follows three women – Lily and Augusta on the ship in 1838, and Everly in present day. What do these three women have in common?

They are each trying to find out who they really are in the face of great loss and hardship. What do they believe? Who will they become? Set in two different centuries they all still face the same bigger questions— questions that will change their lives.

Which of the three women did you relate to the most and why?

While I was writing each section I always felt the most connected to the woman I was writing about at the moment. I don’t think I felt more for one woman than another but of course our modern-day character, Everly felt more relatable only because I know today’s Savannah and I know today’s southern norms and ideas. The historical narratives were almost two hundred years old, and yet I still felt as close to Lilly and Augusta because their plight and their desires and their inner lives feel familiar. As far as women have come in their roles in society, there is still the struggle for independence and agency. There remains the need to burst through familial and collective norms to build a life of one’s own.

All three women had their own tragedies, hardships and losses to navigate. All three needed to discover how they would make meaning and purpose out of their situation. All three found out what they were truly made of and if they wanted to merely survive or if they wanted to thrive and build new lives.

What do you hope readers will take away from this story?

I want readers to take away what matters most to them in this story. I always hope that the transformational journeys of my characters give my reader’s their own aha moments. For each reader this is different, and I only hope it touches them where it most needs to touch them.

I believe that there’s a story in everything. I know that once we understand history as a story and a journey and not mere facts, we are then changed and our views of the past shift.

I want us to see ourselves as part of a larger story. I hope my stories bring my readers home to themselves.