Skeletons on the Zahara: A True Story of Survival - Hardcover

King, Dean

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0316835145 ISBN 13: 9780316835145

Publisher: Little Brown & Co, 2004

Synopsis

Chronicles the hardships encountered by twelve American sailors who, in 1815, were shipwrecked on the coast of North Africa, captured, sold into slavery, and sent on a difficult odyssey through the perilous heart of the Sahara.

About this title

Review:

Some stories are so enthralling they deserve to be retold generation after generation. The wreck in 1815 of the Connecticut merchant ship, Commerce, and the subsequent ordeal of its crew in the Sahara Desert, is one such story. With Skeletons on the Zahara: A True Story of Survival, Dean King refreshes the popular 19th-century narrative once read and admired by Henry David Thoreau, James Fenimore Cooper and Abraham Lincoln. King's version, which actually draws from two separate first-person accounts of the Commerce's crew, offers a page-turning blend of science, history and classic adventure.

The book begins with a seeming false start: tracing the lives of two merchants from North Africa, Seid and Sidi Hamet, who lose their fortunes—-and almost their lives—-when their massive camel caravan arrives at a desiccated oasis. King then jumps to the voyage of the Commerce under Captain Riley and his 11-man crew. After stops in New Orleans and Gibraltar, the ship falls off course en route to the Canary Islands and ultimately wrecks at the infamous Cape Bojador. After the men survive the first predations of the nomads on the shore, they meander along the coast looking for a way inland as their supplies dwindle. They subsist for days by drinking their own urine. Eventually, to their horror, they discover that they have come aground on the edge of the Sahara Desert. They submit themselves, with hopes of getting food and water, as slaves to the Oulad Bou Sbaa. After days of abuse, they are bought by Hamet, who, after his own experiences with his failed caravan (described at the novels opening), sympathises with the plight of the crew. Together, they set off on a hellish journey across the desert to collect a bounty for Hamet in Swearah.

King embellishes this compelling narrative throughout with scientific and historical material explaining the origins of the camel, the market for English and American slaves, and the stages of dehydration. He also humanises the Sahrawi with background on the tribes and on the lives of Hamet and Seid. This material, doled out in sufficient amounts to enrich the story without derailing it, makes Skeletons on the Zahara a perfectly entertaining bit of history that feels like a guilty pleasure. --Patrick O'Kelley, Amazon.com

Review:

"Known for his biography of the elusive Patrick O'Brian...Dean King has emerged from the great man's shadow with a compelling work in his own right... Once ashore, King's narrative, like Riley's leadership, grows in stature and certaintly... As King notes, the understanding, respect and compassion between these representatives of the Christian and Muslim worlds offers a timely example in our own troubled age." (Sunday Times)

"Genuinely gripping, full of twists and turns of fate ... mesmerising ... The torturous journey, with parched tongues and aching bones, in constant fear of bandits who might capture and enslave them, is described in unsparing detail ... The game of bluff and double bluff kept the crewmen's lives on a knife-edge. If you want to know the ending, the Hollywood movie can't be too far behind." (Daily Mail)

"Dean King has brought to life one of the great, true-life adventure stories - a riveting tale of suffering and redemption" (Nathaniel Philbrick)

About this edition

• Publisher: Little Brown & Co
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0316835145
• ISBN 13: 9780316835145
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 353