Note: Thank you to NetGalley, Barbour Publishing, and Denise Weimer for the advanced reader copy of the book. This review will also be posted on NetGalley. What follows is my unbiased review of the book.

Taking a largely overlooked event at the end of the Civil War, author Denise Weimer has managed to craft a compelling story of personal sacrifice and building bridges in the face of unimaginable loss.

Lily Livingston lost everything in the War; her parents, her home, and her twin brother. She and a younger brother now live with her aunt and uncle and help them run the inn they own on the Arkansas side of the Mississippi River.

Cade Palmer is a Union soldier just trying to get home after having been imprisoned at Andersonville. He was an Army surgeon captured during the war along with his childhood friend, James. The two are being brought back to Ohio to be mustered out of the service on board the Sultana. While they are traveling upriver, there is an explosion. Cade and James manage to get off of the doomed vessel after being severely burned.

Lily’s uncle, Thad, and others living in Mound City hear the explosion and attempt to rescue as many as they can from the water. Lily and her brother, Jacob, are only supposed to be there to assist. However, when she hears cries coming from the water, she feels she must help, and ends up pulling James and Cade from the water.

As Cade heals from his wounds at the Inn, Lily and Cade bond. However, her sweetheart, a Confederate partisan, is on his way home. As things are breaking down at the end of the War, some men haven’t given up the battle, yet. Lily is afraid her inaction possibly resulted in men being killed, while Cade struggles with his own place in the world, especially since his hand was shattered. All the while, threats seem to loom around them.

When Hope Sank is a nice love story set at a time when the nation was still feeling the direct effects of the Civil War. The Sultana accident was one of the worst disasters in US maritime history but was largely ignored as it occurred at the same time President Lincoln was assassinated. There were claims of sabotage at the time, and some men even claimed responsibility or knowledge of sabotage many years later, but the evidence seems to point to greed and ignoring safety concerns. The ship had recently had the boilers repaired, but it was a patchwork job, rather than the overhaul it needed. The ship was also overloaded, with over 2,100 people on board when it had a capacity for a little over 900. Furthermore, it was concluded that with the Mississippi River flooding from the spring melt, the boilers were producing too much steam to move the ship upriver. There were government inquiries into this disaster that came to this conclusion, but there was no one person that was ever prosecuted as having caused it; just circumstances trying to get the most money they could at the time for bringing the soldiers north.

Lily and Cade seem to represent the South and North and coming together to try to heal the nation. Lily is a moderate Southerner, who never owned slaves nor approved of the concept. Her closest friend is a former slave, the daughter of the woman who works for her Aunt at the Inn. However, the War took everything from her and she must deal with that. Cade only joined the Army to take care of his friend, James, although it seems that James did his fair share of saving Cade during the war. He must now learn to look at Southerners not as the enemy, but as fellow countrymen again.

The story was good and I enjoyed it a lot. I had some difficulty with the religion in it. Some of it sounds more like the concept of being a “born-again Christian” which wasn’t prevalent in the United States until the 20th century. Cade worries a great deal about his friend’s salvation, which goes against the concept of God’s grace. It’s an important part of the story as it’s one of the things that Lily and Cade bond over. However, the way they expressed it didn’t feel authentic to this period in time. However, the concept of God having something good come out of a disaster is authentic to the time. Cade and Lily seem to grasp it, but the Confederates who still want to fight the war don’t see it that way.

Otherwise, When Hope Sank is a sweet love story, and of connections made between people during a disaster that overrides people’s prejudices. I enjoyed it as a quick read that prompted me to delve more into a part of history I never knew about.