Save Our Souls

The True Story of a Castaway Family, Treachery, and Murder

De: Matthew Pearl

Narrado por: George Newbern

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER

From the bestselling author of The Taking of Jemima Boone, the unbelievable true story of a real-life Swiss Family Robinson (and their dog) who faced sharks, shipwreck, and betrayal.

On December 10, 1887, a shark fishing boat disappeared. On board the doomed vessel were the Walkers—the ship’s captain Frederick, his wife Elizabeth, their three teenage sons, and their dog—along with the ship’s crew. The family had spotted a promising fishing location when a terrible storm arose, splitting their vessel in two and leaving those onboard adrift on the perilous sea.

When the castaways awoke the next morning, they discovered they had been washed ashore—on an island inhabited by a large but ragged and emaciated man who introduced himself as Hans. Hans appeared to have been there for a while and could quickly educate the Walkers and their crew on the island’s resources. But Hans had a secret . . . and as the Walker family gradually came to learn more, what seemed like a stroke of luck to have the mysterious man’s assistance became something ominous, something darker.

Like David Grann and Stacy Schiff, Matthew Pearl unveils one of the most incredible yet little-known historical true stories, and the only known instance in history of an actual family of castaways. Save Our Souls asks us to consider who we might become if we found ourselves trapped on a deserted island.

©2025 Matthew Pearl (P)2025 HarperCollins Publishers

Narrator Saved My Soul

The author takes a kernel of an idea: the Walkers are ship-wrecked on Midway Island—will a man already marooned there save them? From this mini-plot, we are sailed away on various historical anecdotes of “black birding” while commanding a ship, insurance fraud by captains of ships, some stuff about Hawaii, etc., etc., etc….zzzzz….occasionally we return the the cast-aways on the sand spit. For someone like me who has immersed herself in both true crime and extreme survival stories, this was a real yawn. The narrator was perfect for this type of story though, and thank god, or I might have abandoned ship sooner.

Awful

Unable to listen to this. Narrator is terrible. Story goes off repeatedly on tangents almost every other paragraph. Have to return this.

Boring. One long rambling narrative

My god on and on. Didn’t even build climaxes. Where is the dialogue? Dry dry dry on such a great story.