Whose Name It Carries
A Novel by Bruce D Anderson
Archangel, Russia, 1915
Alex Samuelsson has been at sea for fifteen years. A merchant seaman and petty smuggler with an engaging personality and no roots, he sees the turmoil of World War and the collapse of empires as nothing more than a great adventure. Whose Name It Carries is an upmarket historical novel of 106,000 words set in Russia and Northern Europe during the final years of the Romanov empire.
At its heart, this novel is about a man's search for the meaning of family, and his discovery that one's true family may not be the one they're born into.
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In October 1916, U-56 sank SS Ivanhoe, a Norwegian tramp steamer, in the Barents Sea. But not before taking its crew of sixteen aboard the sub. Shortly after, the submarine was attacked by the Russian Navy Cruiser, Grozovoi. The U-boat was damaged but escaped. Two days later, she put Ivanhoe’s crew ashore in a remote Norwegian fishing village. And then U-56 and her entire crew of thirty-six men disappeared from history.
My grandfather was one of Ivanhoe’s crew. His three-page narrative of the experience surfaced in 2021. I set out to write his story, but Whose Name It Carries became something quite different.
