Her entry begins:I love to read books that are true heavily-researched stories that unfold like novels. My two favorite books I read recently was Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann, and Douglas Preston’s Lost City of the Monkey God.About The Stowaway, from the publisher:
Grann was the writer who most inspired me to write narrative non-fiction. He has a true knack for making the 1920’s come alive. I loved Grann’s Lost City of Z too. This latest offering from him was about the oil-rich Native Americans – members of the Osage tribe - who were getting murdered in...[read on]
The spectacular, true story of a scrappy teenager from New York’s Lower East Side who stowed away on the Roaring Twenties’ most remarkable feat of science and daring: an expedition to Antarctica.Visit Laurie Gwen Shapiro's website.
It was 1928: a time of illicit booze, of Gatsby and Babe Ruth, of freewheeling fun. The Great War was over and American optimism was higher than the stock market. What better moment to launch an expedition to Antarctica, the planet’s final frontier? This was the moon landing before the 1960s. Everyone wanted to join the adventure. Rockefellersand Vanderbilts begged to be taken along as mess boys, and newspapers across the globe covered the planning’s every stage.
The night before the expedition’s flagship launched, Billy Gawronski—a skinny, first generation New York City high schooler desperate to escape a dreary future in the family upholstery business—jumped into the Hudson River and snuck aboard.
Could he get away with it?
From the grimy streets of New York’s Lower East Side to the rowdy dance halls of sultry Francophone Tahiti, all the way to Antarctica’s blinding white and deadly freeze, Laurie Gwen Shapiro’s The Stowaway takes you on the unforgettable voyage of a gutsy young stowaway who became an international celebrity, a mascot for an up-by-your bootstraps age.
The Page 99 Test: The Stowaway.
Writers Read: Laurie Gwen Shapiro.
--Marshal Zeringue
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