On a bright November day in 1913, a young deckman named Harry Darling joins The James Carruthers, a large cargo carrier leaving Port William and bound for Midland on her last cargo run of the season. Harry's estranged father, Connor Darling, is onshore, unaware of Harry's whereabouts and consumed with staving off the end of his failing mink farm. When a cyclonic weather event descends over the entire region, Harry and Connor reconsider perceptions of past transgressions, and with the help of a telegraph operator named Flo, each navigates the shoals of loss and betrayal, and searches for an idea of home.
Told from the perspectives of Harry, Connor, and Flo, The Current Between is a terrifying fictional account of those caught in the Great Storm of 1913, the most devastating marine disaster in the history of the Great Lakes.
"Mills-Milde brilliantly recreates the early twentieth century in Southern Ontario. The novel's portrayal of the final hours on board a doomed lake freighter is truly one of the most vivid and terrifying accounts of the greatest disaster to befall the inland lakes ever written."
David Yates, historian and author of Out of the Woods, and The Time of our Lives.
"Readers will find themselves pulled under by narrative currents that connect characters and waterways in an ongoing and often stormy cycle of renewal and regeneration. In this strangely charged place,
where land and water meet, we witness both the fragility of human endeavor and the strength
and power of relationships-between and among humans, animals, and the places they call
home."
Tom Cull, former Poet Laureate of London, Ontario, and author of Bad Animals and Kill Your
Starlings.
This is historical fiction at its best-alive to the complexities of people and events, and compulsively
readable.
Aaron Schneider author of What We Think We Know and Grass-Fed
