Justin's Notes
May 14, 2026
Save Our Souls follows the Wandering Minstrel, a shark fishing boat with a unique crew: the entire Walker family, including the mother, three teenagers, and even the family dog. In the winter of 1887, near what is now known as Midway Atoll (about 1,300 miles NW of Hawaii), the family was shipwrecked. As they washed ashore, they were surprised to find a man already stranded there, with a mysterious and dangerous past.
This book was awesome. The story was compelling and told in an engaging way. It felt similar to The Wager, where I sometimes forgot I was reading narrative history and not fiction. I just can't believe that this boat shipwrecked on an island that happened to already have someone there. Pearl also gave a ton of extra context, including the pressures of captains, the illegal opium trades of the late 1800s, and the general hardships of sailing. There were times in this story where I got a little confused on the connection between events, but Pearl often tied them up nicely later on.
I have also learned I apparently have an interest in historical shipwrecks, because this book drew me in almost as much as The Wager did. There is something really cool to me about stories like this, and I found myself googling as I read to try and learn more. Googling this shipwreck and the people in it primarily returned results directly mentioning or linking this book itself. In a world of the internet, it feels really cool to have a piece of work like this book that feels like the best record of the event instead of a Wikipedia page. It also led me to quite a bit more browsing, specifically the history of Midway Atoll itself. This island has quite the historical past, most notably the Battle of Midway in World War II. I just love books like this that take a seemingly niche historical event and turn it into the inspiration for me to go look up a bunch of other stuff.
The easiest recommendation is to anyone who has read The Wager and enjoyed it. If you enjoy history or are interested in shipwrecks, I have to believe you would really enjoy this as well. If you don't know if you like reading narrative history but want to give it a try, this is a great option.
