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Chapter Overview
Chapter 1: AudiobookHub Recommendation
Chapter 2: — The Night the Ocean Took Everything
Chapter 3: — The Choices War Forces
Chapter 4: — The Departure That Feels Like Betrayal
Chapter 5: — Carlisle at Sea, Hope on a Schedule
Chapter 6: — The Hit
Chapter 7: — Rules of Convoy, Rules of the Sea
Chapter 8: — The Missing Lifeboat
Chapter 9: — The Angel of the Atlantic
Chapter 10: — The Lives They Rebuild
Description
The Last Lifeboat is a World War II historical novel that follows two women on opposite sides of a single catastrophe: Alice King, a quiet Kent schoolteacher turned CORB child-evacuation escort, and Lily Nicholls, a widowed South London mother forced to gamble her children’s lives against the terror of the Blitz.
When the evacuee ship SS Carlisle is torpedoed in the mid-Atlantic on 17 September 1940, Alice and a handful of survivors are thrown into a raging storm and an open lifeboat. Back in London, Lily receives the letter every parent dreads—then refuses to accept its finality. As official explanations collapse and hard questions emerge about convoy rules and naval protection, both women fight to hold on to hope, each driven by love, guilt, and the need for answers.
Blending survival drama with home-front grief and resilience, the story explores what war demands of ordinary people—and how courage can look like a mother’s insistence on searching, or an escort’s refusal to stop caring when everything goes dark.
Who Should Listen
- Listeners who like WWII historical fiction centered on civilians, evacuation, and the home front.
- Fans of survival-at-sea stories with high emotional stakes and ensemble tension.
- Readers drawn to character-driven narratives about motherhood, grief, moral choices, and resilience.