Claire grew up with the legend of the Unsinkable Mounsey Women. Her great-great-grandmother Fanny made headlines in 1915 for washing ashore in England nearly a year after her ship sank. Fanny’s daughter Sarah went to collect her mother on the equally ill-fated Lusitania—whose sinking she, too, survived. Their improbable endurance led to regional stardom on the Midwestern vaudeville circuit. But Claire never knew the full story—until now.
[An] extraordinary tale ... Terrifically comic ... Carusillo is a master of the vigorous and inclusive aside, employing a crackling blend of high and low diction ... Affirms that we can’t necessarily escape the conduct of our predecessors, while gleefully celebrating, one smashing sentence at a time, that there’s alchemy to be found in the hands of the right legatee.
Unruly and comic ... arusillo treats the Mounsey legend as a kind of vaudeville act itself, spectacular, improbable, and always slightly at odds with what actually happened.
