Black November Format: Paperback

Great Lakes Book Award Nominee (2007)Finalist ForeWord Book of the Year (2006, YA Nonfiction)Michigan's "storms of November" are famous in song, lore, and legend and have taken a tragic toll, breaking the hulls of many ships and sending them to cold, dark, and silent graves on the bottoms of the Great Lakes. On November 18, 1958, when the limestone carrier Carl D. Bradley broke up during a raging storm on Lake Michigan, it became the largest ship in Great Lakes' history to vanish beneath storm-tossed waves. Along with the Bradley, thirty-three crew members perished. Most of the casualties hailed from the little harbor town of Rogers City, Michigan, a community that was stung with grief when, in an instant, twenty-three women became widows and fifty-three children were left fatherless. Nevertheless, this is also a story of survival, as it recounts the tale of two of the ship's crew, whose fifteen-hour ordeal on a life raft, in gale-force winds and 25 foot waves, is a remarkable story of endurance and tenacity. Written in an appealing style that is accessible to all readers and complemented with an insert of historical photographs, Black November is a tale of adventure, courage, heroism, and tragedy. Kantar, the author of 29 Missing, a Michigan Notable book about the loss of the Great Lakes freighter the Edmund Fitzgerald has once again crafted a dramatic narrative that is both informative and compelling. Although the Carl D. Bradley has been called "the ship that time forgot," Black November recalls that tragic day more than fifty years ago and is a moving tribute to the ship and its crew.