Again!  I get to Chapter 4 or something in a book from the library and I’m not at all happy with the narrator, but plugging away and getting very sleepy. The next morning I started in again and after a few pages … um … Big oops!  

The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder
By David Grann; April, 2023
Read by Dion Graham / David Grann
Rating 9+ / literary history – suspense  
(Both read and listened)

This is terrific stuff!  I want the maps! I want the Notes!  I want the Author’s Note!  I see by the sample at Amazon that the Kindle version has those things.  Oh dear – lol! So I already had the library audio book (Libby) and now promptly added the Kindle version.

Then I started over.  LOL!  I’d only gotten to page 20 or so before I realized this book was a whole lot better than I’d thought it would be. And this time I was taking notes about the crew and the troubles – at least for awhile.

I’ve read all three of Grann’s books and they’ve just gotten better and better. There was The Lost City of Oz in 2008, Killers of the Flower Moon in 2017 and now, The Wager, 2023.

I think when nonfiction reads like a novel it’s often called “creative nonfiction.”  The Wager is definitely, imo, “creative nonfiction.” This is NOT to say it’s inaccurate or uses questionable sources. Rather, it’s “creative” in the sense that it uses a structure which builds tension into some dry facts. It might also include allusions, metaphors, and other literary tropes and devices.  Plus there’s some poetic and specialized vocabulary added to the story.  

This book,  probably classified as world history in most places, includes all of the above and adds an interesting Author’s Note, Acknowledgements, Source Notes, an Index, a Bibliography, and a meaningful photos section.  It’s nonfiction which “reads like a novel.”  

The time period for the book is 1738 – to 1748, from the time of departure until the time of the memoirs of a tragic shipwreck in a place very near Antarctica. This was when England was at war with Spain over who gets what in their contentious competition for Empire. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Jenkins%27_Ear

The specific story of shipwreck, horrors, and mutiny takes place between 1740 and 1742 at the southernmost tip of South America – Cape Horn.   

I’ve read enough non-fiction adventure stories, fiction and non-, to know what I’m getting into. Some are great, others are so-so. They can either numb me out of hold me spellbound – I just have to see for myself.

It was described as horror by some reviews but if it’s nonfiction that’s okay with me. (Who cares what a person can make up?) And it is horrifying to read about ships on the verge of total destruction with scurvy and other diseases plus rats and vermin running around disfiguring the already deceased.

There are basically 3 characters who are followed by Grann mainly because of their journals and logs.

1st Lieutenant – David Cheqp – Scotsman who joined Navy for personal reasons at home.  He’s confident and he loves the English Navy. He wanted to be a captain and spent much of his life at sea. He  knew what a really great ship the Centurion was   

John Byron –  a 16-year old midshipman, poor but from the noble line at Newstead Abbey. Lord Byron the romantic poet was his grandson.

John Bulkeley (the gunner) – part of the mutiny – to find him online Google: John Bulkeley Wager .  

Check the reviews – it’s a great book. I hope it wins some awards.