Attacked at Sea: A True World War II Story of a Family's Fight for Survival by Michael J. Tougias (review)

[Correction]

Tougias, Michael J. Attacked at Sea: A True World War II Story of a Family's Fight for Survival; by Michael J. Tougias and Alison O'Leary. Holt, 2020 [224p] illus. with photographs Trade ed. ISBN 9781250128065 $19.99 E-book ed. ISBN 9781250128072 $9.99 Reviewed from digital galleys R Gr. 5-8

For the Downs family, Dad's new job as a United Fruit Company railroad mechanic in Colombia seemed like the perfect way to live in comparatively high style while reaping good wages and saving for a better home back in the United States. Then disruptions to shipping hobbled commerce, Mrs. Downs became disillusioned with her fellow expats, and a transfer to Costa Rica didn't improve matters, so in May of 1942 they took a company freighter headed north to New Orleans. Their trip coincided with German Admiral Dönitz's deployment of U-boats in the Gulf of Mexico, and just forty miles south of port the Heredia was hit with torpedoes and the Downses were separated, with eight-year-old Sonny reconnecting with his father and two other survivors on a raft, Mrs. Downs clinging to flotsam, and eleven-year-old Lucille scooped up into the care of struggling crew members. After hours of dehydration, hypothermia, and shark threats, the survivors were sighted by plane and rescued by smaller craft, while the U-boat commanders returned to their European base and military honor. With years of war ahead, neither Axis nor Allied players in this drama were to end on a positive note, as Tougias and O'Leary describe in this true survival story that judiciously carries forward beyond the relief of the rescue. The peril facing two children lost at sea is convincingly conveyed, and the lasting effect on their family life is equally sobering. Illustrated plates are included, as are author notes and a bibliography.