In the bestselling tradition of Indianapolis and In Harm's Way
comes a "captivating...gripping" (Kirkus Reviews, starred review)
account of the USS Plunkett--a US Navy destroyer that sustained the
most harrowing attack on any Navy ship by the Germans during World War
II, later made famous by John Ford and Herman Wouk.
"A reflection on the nature of storytelling itself" (The Wall Street
Journal), Unsinkable traces the individual journeys of five men on
one ship from Casablanca in North Africa, to Sicily and Salerno in Italy
and then on to Plunkett's defining moment at Anzio, where a dozen-odd
German bombers bore down on the ship in an assault so savage, so
prolonged, and so deadly that one Navy commander was hard-pressed to
think of another destroyer that had endured what Plunkett had. After a
three-month overhaul and with a reputation rising as the "fightin'est
ship" in the Navy, Plunkett (DD-431) plunged back into the war at
Omaha Beach on D-Day, and again into battle during the invasion of
Southern France--perhaps the only Navy ship to participate in every
Allied invasion in the European theatre.
Featuring five incredibly brave men--the indomitable skipper, who will
receive the Navy Cross; the gunnery officer, who bucks the captain every
step of the way to Anzio; a first lieutenant, who's desperate to get off
the ship and into the Pacific; a seventeen-year-old water tender, who's
trying to hold onto his hometown girl against all odds, and another
water tender, who mans a 20mm gun when under aerial assault--the
dramatic story of each plays out on the decks of the Plunkett as the
ship's story escalates on the stage of the Mediterranean. Based on Navy
logs, war diaries, action reports, letters, journals, memoirs, and
dozens of interviews with the men who were on the ship and their
families, Unsinkable is a timeless evocation of young men stepping up
to the defining experience of their lives. "If you were moved by Norman
Maclean's A River Runs Through It, by William Kent Krueger's This
Tender Land...by the values we hold dear, decency, sacrifice,
steadfastness, then Unsinkable will take you to a place long dead in
your soul, and flood it with light" (Doug Stanton, #1 New York Times
bestselling author of Horse Soldiers).
