Toksvig, Signe Life Boat: A Novel
A somewhat melodramatic plot (two cousins seemingly in love with each other’s husbands) mars this otherwise interesting novel, much of which is set aboard the fictitious motor ship ALTAIR as the vessel travels from New York to Germany via Denmark just after the start of the Second World War. Toksvig includes a rather Grand Hotel-ish cast of characters, including swinish Germans whose rants on the “great Germanic-Nordic race” initially perplex the ALTAIR’s politically naive Americans passengers. The novel’s most successful sequence involves the dramatic rescue crewmen off a sinking Norwegian trawler during a violent North Atlantic hurricane.
Though the ALTAIR safely reaches port she is sunk a few months later by a German U-boat which prompts one character, safely back at home in the United States, to exclaim:
“It’s the dirtiest outrage I ever heard of! A neutral ship sailing in ballast between neutral ports! Sure I know they’ve done it before, and that they’ll do it again, the !”
The novel winds down with America not yet a participant in the Second World War, though Toksvig’s American characters now clearly realize the dangers that German militarism poses to the United States. The author concludes her novel with another key character stating that the German people under the Nazis are “apostles of ruthless annihilation.” That being voiced, he resigns his position as an American merchant marine officer to offer his services to the Canadian navy for the duration.