Surviving Savannah

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-10

Chapters 11-24

Chapters 25-48

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Themes

Fate and Choice

Surviving Savannah consistently evokes fate. It is central to the plot and character arcs of many of the lead and supporting characters. They bring their perspectives, which are often challenged by the circumstances in which they find themselves. Much of the novel focuses on how much agency someone has. Surviving Savannah poses the question: Is fate immutable, or can the actions of individuals affect it? All three protagonists, Everly, Augusta, and Lilly, find themselves in positions to answer the question in their own ways.

Everly comes to realize that the future can be changed but the past cannot. At the beginning of the book, it seems like life has become uncontrollable and she just has to survive it. Instead of being an active participant in her own life, she sidelines herself, believing that whatever fate or life has in store for her is going to be awful. Everly’s catchphrase used to be “I wonder what happens next” (360), but she stopped saying it after Mora died. Everly’s perspective on fate begins to shift when she sees that she can have an impact on the world around her and can make choices about how to live. The epiphany occurs when she is diving and must choose between life and death. As she is underwater, she asks herself what matters. At the beginning, she would have said nothing does without Mora. By the end, she affirms that everything matters. She knows that she can choose to embrace life. Fate isn’t set in stone, and she can change it for the better.

Augusta contemplates whether God’s providence is responsible for her survival after the wreck. At first, like many others, including Charles, Augusta is grief-stricken by the disaster. She watched her sister-in-law and five of her six nieces and nephews die within three days. She wonders if God is with her and the other survivors or if He has abandoned them. She determines that for God to act, she needs to pray and fight to survive. It is by taking action that God’s providence will lead her to salvation. She knows that God is with them through the kindness shown by people who might otherwise focus on their own survival.

Lilly believes free will is more powerful than fate. She can determine her destiny. At the beginning of the book, she resigns herself to accepting the fate determined by Adam and society. However, as she navigates the disaster, she realizes she doesn’t need someone else to tell her what to do. She can make her own decisions. Instead of letting herself and Priscilla be taken back to Savannah, she leaves the Benedicts’ house and flees to Michigan. She makes a life for herself, Madeline, and Priscilla. The narrator says, “The life Lilly had chosen wasn’t easy, but she had come to see the precious value of a life lived on her own terms” (377).

The theme of fate and choice follows the three protagonists. Each of them is forced to leave their normal lives and see what happens when everything changes instantly, resetting the fates they believed they had in store.

Stories of the Past Inform the Present

As a historian, Everly understands that the past informs the present and future. She sees how the actions of someone from nearly 200 years ago impact people today. The connections between the past and present leave a trail of clues for Everly to follow until she finds the key to unraveling the mystery of the Pulaski survivors. When Lilly left with her daughter and Priscilla, Adam erected a statue in her honor, cementing her name in history. The statue and myth of her survival led to Papa’s curiosity about her, and his fantastical stories about her captured Everly’s imagination, leading her to become a historian.

As Everly’s love of discovering and telling stories is rekindled, she realizes that the person she lost, Mora, is a part of the Pulaski mystery. Josephine tries to bury the family ties to Charles Longstreet because of the atrocities he committed. However, Everly believes that ignoring the bad parts of history, glossing over those stories, makes it impossible to honor the victims and celebrate the good parts: “The story we’re telling is about what survived […] How do we possibly explain that except by telling the truth of it?” (361). This quotation expresses Everly’s core belief as a historian, and it is part of the message she tries to impart to the visitors to her exhibit.

To Everly, the job of a historian is to illustrate how the past impacts the present. She traces the choices made by Lilly, Augusta, and Charles and draws connections to the present. Mora would never have been born without Augusta’s fight to survive. In turn, the love of life and sense of adventure she had wouldn’t have influenced Everly. Similarly, a part of Civil War history and the history of slavery in the United States would not have happened if Charles had died or had been able to process the pain and grief he carried with him. If Lilly hadn’t run away, the Pulaski tragedy likely would have remained a footnote in naval history.

Grief and Guilt

Surviving Savannah is a story about grief and guilt. The storyline of each of the protagonists is based on her experiences of traumatic events. Everly is dealing with the death of her best friend in a hit-and-run accident. Augusta and Lilly experience the sinking of the Pulaski. Even the secondary character Maddox, Everly’s mentor and guide, faces grief over the accidental death of a graduate student. The climax of the novel, Everly’s dive to the Pulaski wreckage, focuses on her recovery and healing from her grief and guilt over Mora’s death. Every character is challenged with overcoming a traumatic experience. Callahan explores these feelings both during and immediately after their traumatic experiences.

At the start of the novel, Everly’s life is shaped by the grief and survivor’s guilt she feels. She’s afraid to even look at Oliver when he first arrives, thinking, “What if he said the words I believed he kept folded in the unspoken places—It should have been you” (11). She stopped being curious about the world around her, scared that she would find more grief and suffering. She says, “Mora’s death had robbed me of joy, removed my curiosity and stolen my love of life’s adventure” (28). These thoughts haunt her until she is pushed by Maddox and Oliver to start living again. Her quest to find answers and tell the story of the Pulaski survivors draws her out of her grief until she can move forward with her life.

Lilly is filled with grief and guilt when she is on the lifeboat. Her guilt is tied to the desperate cries she hears from people begging to be left on the lifeboat. However, she and many of the other lifeboat passengers realize they can’t save everyone because it would overwhelm the small boat and cause everyone’s death. She is also guilt-ridden over abandoning Adam. She knows she had to if she ever hoped to find freedom, but she can’t help but feel responsible for what she assumes was his watery demise. Lilly’s guilt sits with her despite her attempts to rationalize it. However, she slowly moves past guilt as she focuses on the survival of her daughter and her fight for a life on her terms.

Augusta is repeatedly placed in circumstances that test her ability to withstand grief and guilt. When the Pulaski begins to sink, she is on an overfilled, broken lifeboat. The second it touches the water it flips and breaks apart, sending its passengers into the waves. Augusta clings to Thomas, and as she tries to find something to keep them afloat, she grabs a dead body. At that moment, she is faced with the life-and-death stakes of her situation. Then, once she finds something to hold on to, she has to choose between keeping her nephew or niece alive. A split-second decision to save Thomas haunts her. She wonders if she made the right choice. While some, like Lamar and Henry, are understanding of her terrible predicament, Charles is not.

And maybe Charles was right: she had made the wrong choice when she turned her back on Eliza and grabbed Thomas from the sea instead. But what else could she have done? She played it over and over as her mind bounced between all of these wonderings. Sleep eluded her and sorrow burrowed into her soul (351).

He throws her guilt in her face, and later her decision becomes a major point of contention within the Longstreet family. Charles believes that if she had saved Eliza, there would be two surviving Longstreet children instead of one. When she, Lamar, Thomas, and Charles are thrown in different directions when a wave crashes over the wreckage, Augusta’s grief overwhelms her and she screams with sorrow.

Guilt and grief are the predominant forces challenging each protagonist in this novel. Each woman must face them to move forward and live, living out Papa’s distinction: “Some people didn’t die and some people lived” (322). The difference between surviving and living is what makes the theme of guilt and grief so poignant in Surviving Savannah. It asks the reader to understand that processing and accepting what happened impacts who you are and the life you will lead, just as much as the event itself.