Contributed by Gillion Machota
Big Water is a fictional account of the real-life story of the only two survivors from the SS Asia in 1882. Christina is escaping from home after the incident of her brother’s death, but when the ships crashes, Christina goes overboard and gets knocked out. When Daniel pulls her into safety, they both realise that they are the only two left alive from the SS Asia and so, over the course of the book, we get to see their experience unfold along with their character development.
This book is like if Life of Pi met Salt to the Sea, which is another book I highly recommend. Big Water was full of suspense and adventure, but it also felt just a little off. We were introduced to so many side characters and then they just died right after so we, the reader just has to forget about them. The only thing that was mentioned multiple times was Christina’s brother’s death, who died from consumption.
I felt like the whole romance that was going on felt unneeded. With plotlines like that I feel like it takes away the whole focus of the story and I usually do not like books like that, but they only had two little romantic moments in the story and that was about it. Overall, the book was a memorable story and it could have been so much better if it had more detail to the story and plus, the paperback copy was only 192 pages.
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Synopsis | Goodreads
Seventeen-year-old Christina McBurney, grieving the loss of her twin brother, Jonathan, to consumption, has run away from her Parkdale home. She believes her mother wishes she had been the one to die, and she plans to find work far away as a nursemaid or teacher. Christina’s cousin Peter is the first mate on the Asia, a steamship that transports passengers and freight throughout the Great Lakes, so she seeks him out to secure passage to Sault Ste. Marie.
But when a violent storm suddenly rises, the overloaded and top-heavy steamship begins to sink. Christina, heeding the warnings from her cousin, somehow makes her way to the hurricane deck. A large wave tosses her overboard, but just before she loses consciousness, she is pulled to safety.
Hours later, adrift on the wide-open water of Georgian Bay, in a lifeboat full of corpses, Christina is nervous about being alone with Daniel, a brooding young man with a likely criminal past and the only other passenger left alive. But they both know that working together is the only way they will find the strength to make it to safety.
Big Water is a fictional account of the real-life story of the only two survivors of the sinking of the SS Asia in 1882.
