The News

It was good to see that the books editor for Oxford Today has taken a shine to Making Shore. Reviewer Lindsey Harrad calls the book "a compelling, memorable tale of endurance".

Here's an extract from Lindsey's review:

"Making Shore describes the perils faced by merchant sailors as they steered supply ships across an Atlantic ocean crawling with German submarines in 1942. Allerton’s fictional interpretation of Clarke’s real experiences fuses the adventures of a young radio officer on board the Sithonia, with a poignant love story. When the ship is torpedoed and sunk by a German U-Boat en route to South America, the sensitive depiction of the crew’s struggle portrays the deep and bitter irony of being completely surrounded by undrinkable seawater, as the men are withered inside and out by thirst and sun exposure: “Water. The want of it had taken each one of us by the neck and forced us through the vale of death. And there, the garbs of social conscience, of sanity, of our fragile humanity, like the flesh about our bones, had dropped away.” As the crew’s “fragile humanity” gives way to conflict and desperation, the struggle for survival proves to be a deranged, dirty and dangerous business.