Sultana: Fire on the River: The Titanic of the Mississippi (The Sultana Series: Stories of America's Civil War and America's Worst Maritime Disaster Book 2)

Sultana: Fire on the RiverThe story of America’s deadliest maritime disaster.Told through the eyes of a boy who was never meant to survive it.Robert Mercer is fourteen when he runs away from his home in Henderson, Kentucky—leaving behind a judge’s household, a classical education, and a future already chosen for him—to apprentice as a cub pilot on the newly launched steamboat Sultana. Intelligent, observant, and quiet by necessity, Robert learns the river not as romance but as work: a place of soundings, habits, and margins that men test without always naming the risk.As the Civil War grinds toward its end, the Sultana becomes another tool of necessity—hauling freight, soldiers, and finally thousands of paroled Union prisoners north on an overloaded run that everyone understands but no one stops. Robert watches from the margins, too young and too low-ranked to decide anything, yet old enough to see the weight gathering.When fire erupts on the Mississippi in the early hours of April 27, 1865, Robert survives by chance and position, not heroism. In the aftermath, he becomes a reluctant witness—one who understands the mechanics of the disaster but cannot give it meaning. While the nation moves on, he is left carrying what the river would not: memory.Neither a sequel nor a prequel, Sultana: Fire on the River is a parallel telling of the Sultana tragedy—an intimate account of work, silence, and survival, and of how history is often shaped not by those who choose, but by those who see clearly and live. Read more