Could the El Faro disaster have been prevented? Rachel Slade will tell us about her new book

into the raging sea, 33 mariners, one megastorm, and the sinking of El Faro. How hard is it to

adjust to life in America after surviving the Rwandan genocide? Clementine Oamaria will

be here to talk about her memoir, The Girl Who Smiled Beads. Plus, our critics'

white-garner, Carl Siggle and Jen Salai will join us to talk about the latest

in literary criticism. This is the Book Review Podcast for the New York Times. I'm Pamela Paul.

Rachel Slade joins us now from Brookline, Massachusetts. She is the author of Into the

Raging Sea, 33 mariners, one megastorm, and the sinking of El Faro. Rachel, thank you so much for

being here. Thank you for having me, Pamela. So this is your first book. Very exciting, a huge

positive review from Douglas Preston, a best-selling author in the Book Review. This week, how did you get

interested in the subject of El Faro? The Ship Break story is one of the oldest human dramas in history,

and we've got the Odyssey, Tempest, Moody Dick, Perfect Storm. I mean, this is one of those

classic stories. So naturally, when I heard about a modern shipwreck, I was drawn to it. But this

story has a uniquely 21st century twist in that we have 26 hours of recordings on the bridge that

were captured by that black box. And so now, just like everything in the 20th century, this is the

most documented shipwreck in the history of the world. And does everyone, does anyone have access

to that transcript, or how did you get access? The transcript is public, yes, everybody has access.

It's 500 pages long. Wow. So I mean, it makes for a very different kind of reporting experience,

because whereas Sebastian Younger didn't know, just had to kind of speculate and infer what happened

during those last hours for the perfect storm, you know exactly what happens.

We know exactly what happened on the bridge. The microphones were only on the bridge, so we don't

have information about what was happening down below. So of course, there is a lot of conjecture

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