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The Last Lifeboat

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The Last Lifeboat

By: Hazel Gaynor
Narrated by: Billie Fulford-Brown
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A Most Anticipated Book by Real Simple ∙ SheReads ∙ BookBub ∙ and more!

Inspired by a remarkable true story, a young teacher evacuates children to safety across perilous waters, in a moving and triumphant new novel from New York Times bestselling author Hazel Gaynor.

1940, Kent: Alice King is not brave or daring—she’s happiest finding adventure through the safe pages of books. But times of war demand courage, and as the threat of German invasion looms, a plane crash near her home awakens a strength in Alice she’d long forgotten. Determined to do her part, she finds a role perfectly suited to her experience as a schoolteacher—to help evacuate Britain’s children overseas.

1940, London: Lily Nichols once dreamed of using her mathematical talents for more than tabulating the cost of groceries, but life, and love, charted her a different course. With two lively children and a loving husband, Lily’s humble home is her world, until war tears everything asunder. With her husband gone and bombs raining down, Lily is faced with an impossible choice: keep her son and daughter close, knowing she may not be able to protect them, or enroll them in a risky evacuation scheme, where safety awaits so very far away.

When a Nazi U-boat torpedoes the S. S. Carlisle carrying a ship of children to Canada, a single lifeboat is left adrift in the storm-tossed Atlantic. Alice and Lily, strangers to each other—one on land, the other at sea—will quickly become one another’s very best hope as their lives are fatefully entwined.

©2023 Hazel Gaynor (P)2023 Penguin Audio 20th Century Fiction Historical Fiction Women's Fiction U-Boat War Submarine England

Critic reviews

“Hazel Gaynor's novels have a way of gripping a reader's heartstrings, and her latest, The Last Lifeboat, is no exception. Inspired by the 1940 sinking of the SS City of Benares, The Last Lifeboat imagines what might have happened in a lifeboat lost at sea and the child evacuees onboard. Gaynor's latest is a glimpse into the anguish amid the families impacted by mass evacuations during WWII, but more than this, it is a story of bravery and surrendering to hope—especially for two women facing the most unimaginable of circumstances. A poignant, stirring tale. I'll be thinking about this one for a long time to come.” —Sarah Penner, New York Times bestselling author of The Lost Apothecary

“In The Last Lifeboat, beloved historical fiction author Hazel Gaynor illuminates a little known incident from the Second World War: the sinking by German U-boat of a ship carrying children who were being evacuated from Britain. The book tells the harrowing story from the alternating perspectives of Lily, a mother in England faced with the excruciating dilemma of whether to send her children away, and Alice, who escorts the evacuee children and finds herself charged with helping a small group of them survive in a lifeboat for eight days after the ship sinks. With her trademark combination of meticulous research and gifted storytelling, Gaynor weaves a tale that is captivating, heartbreaking and unforgettable. —Pam Jenoff, New York Times bestselling author of Code Name Sapphire

"A searing, emotional, based-on-a-true-story tale of impossible survival and incredible hope aboard a single lifeboat adrift in a greedy, perilous sea. … Gaynor’s story is powerful not just in its closely researched adherence to astonishing historical truth, but also in the way she so richly imagines the emotions of both those aboard the doomed ship and those on land who made the wrenching decision to part with their children. You’ll be on the edge of your seat as you root for a mother who’s lost nearly everything, a courageous children’s guardian finding her inner strength, and a ragtag group of survivors alone in the storm-tossed Atlantic.”
—Kristin Harmel, New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Lost Names
Compelling Survival Story • Captivating Historical Fiction • Emotional Narrative • Riveting Wartime Account
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I have just finished this story. I love everything about it. I am not a big audio book listener. I tend to wander with my thoughts. However, this story had me enraptured. The narration was as beautiful as the story itself. I could feel the emotion that she was emanating. Several times having goose bumps. It was an emotional rollercoaster in a good way. As the other person who reviewed this before myself, this was the best credit I have ever spent as well. I highly recommend it.

Powerful, Educational, and Evoking

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I loved everything. It is heartbreaking and so relatable. The pain of war, the joy of love and family.

Realistic, sad, suspenseful

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Wow…what a great novel! It was so good, I finished it in ONE day. I kept telling myself to turn the book off and save some of it for later, but I found myself unable to tear myself away from it.

There was a lot of sadness and despair in this story, but it is offset by an equal amount of hope and joy. The emotions of the mothers in this book are so deep…you can FEEL their profound sadness and their deep feelings of hope.

The perseverance and the will to live of the people in the lifeboat is astounding. How they endured, how they found moments of joy and hope, how they found moments of beauty in their surrounding and an ability to appreciate them in the midst of what they were enduring just astounds me.

There was not a moment in this book in which my attention strayed or in which I felt bored. I didn’t want this book to end. I know this book was JUST released, but I hope Ms. Gaynor is already hard at work on her next novel.

Don’t miss this book — it’s one of the best credits I’ve ever spent.

A WONDERFUL STORY OF PERSEVERANCE

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This story is remarkable, tragic, horrific, heroic, poignant, and inconsolable. It is a mournful reminder of the atrocities of the patriarchy and the men who seek domination through brutality and the thousands of lives that every war a man has started has systematically ended in civilian's death. The barbaric fodder that women and children become in spoiled men's tantrums for supremacy. Women, who not only send their sons to war but also bury their children when that war lands on their soil, who never had a say in any of it...makes you wonder why men are allowed any role in decision making when historically they have NEVER made peace, safety or happiness their priority. Maybe it's time women ran the world - Men have consistently made it worse, through egos, brutality, tyranny, exploitation and oppression. I cannot imagine mother's ruling countries sending their children into war. They would argue it out amoung the adults before ever even thinking of sending their children into a massacre.
This is a very sad story that should never be forgotten. Not only for the lives lost but because of the disgraceful acts of violence done by mankind. That we have yet to learn not to repeat.

Tragic Fact told with Compassion

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Based on a true story, the main place settings include a state of the art (for the 1900s) Steam Ship. Among the hudreds of passengers are a few groups of Kinder Transport; British children going to safety in America during the WWII attacks on England.
Another main setting is within Great Britian itself. We learn what it was like in London during the blitzkrieg attacks. Experiences of the children's mothers, Aunts, and close family and friends.
--I had a hard time setting this book down...so if you read before bed, expect to stay up late. it's that good!
I have loved all the books by Hazel Gaynor that I have read.

Must Read!

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I like that I learned a lot about why children were sent from England to keep them safe. But, there were no safe places

The bravery of these young people and the devastation to their parents

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Hazel Gaynor is one of my favorite authors so I had high expectations. It was a great read and I would highly recommend but not my favorite book by her.

Great read

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Love the way this author writes. I felt like I was on the lifeboat with its passengers

Great story

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The Last Lifeboat is such a compelling, fictionalized account, based on a true WWII event and people, that captured my attention and heart from its start. I highly recommend this to anyone who appreciates not just stories of survival, but those of people who rise above dire circumstances to be so much more than they ever expected they'd be.

Amazing True Story of Human Resiliency

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I loved this book! It was well written and well read via Audible. Set in WWll in the early 1940’s England, families are enduring nightly air raids taking their families into air raid shelters sometimes till dawn. They are cramped, scary, dark, damp, cold and sometimes they fall in due to the bombs and those in the shelter die anyway. The government offers to send some of the UK children away to Canada and Australia to be hosted by families to keep them safe till the war ends. There are limited numbers of children who can go. Would you as a parent keep your children and take the chances they remain safe or ship them off? The ship is supposed to be in a convoy which protects the ship from any enemy fire. Unfortunately, one ship carrying children does get torpedoed and sunk. Not everyone survived. A life boat goes missing, will it be found? This is a story of the people at home as well as those in that boat and how everything happened.

Highly recommend this book. No sex, no foul language that I recall, just a really good book that keeps you wanting to listen.

One of my biggest fears would be stranded at sea

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