Saved at the Seawall: Stories from the September 11 Boat Lift by Jessica DuLong
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I was a daily news reporter at Wired.com on September 11. I was running on a treadmill at Club One, the gym down the street from our offices, when I saw the second plane smash into the World Trade Center. I yelled “I think we’re at war” in the direction of my colleague and friend, and we sprinted down the street to our offices.
Wired, like so many publications, abandoned our technology focus for the next few days. Instead, we dedicated the newsroom to covering what happened, which included coordinating with our New York City office.
I’m telling you this because even though I was in the middle of covering the terrorist attacks, I had never heard the story of the civilian boats, the captains, and the crew who evacuated somewhere around five-hundred thousand people on that horrific day.
Jessica DuLong, a writer and a former mariner, spent years tracking down the people involved in the single-largest water evacuation in American history. Then, she managed to weave together their stories into a narrative that both places you in the terrifying chaos of that day and grounds you in the individual stories of the firefighters, the police, the captains, the crew, and the civilians.
Normally, I like to read books while I’m sitting outside in open-air cafes or bars, but I had to stop doing that with this book because the tears kept flowing. The reason: This isn’t just a book that strings together the events of the day; it’s also a treatise on the human spirit and our ability to rally around each other in the most dire of circumstances.
I’ll end this by telling you, dear reader, what I’ve told everyone else in my life: Read this book. It’s a fascinating, beautiful, heartbreaking story about the triumph of the human spirit on one of our country’s darkest days.
