Is there an audiobook of The Gales of November?

Yes. The Gales of November has an Audible audiobook edition, narrated by Johnny Heller.

Is The Gales of November on Kindle Unlimited?

No. The Gales of November was not included with Kindle Unlimited when we last checked on September 17, 2026.

The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald by John U. Bacon book cover for the Book of the Day history book review

Our score

4.5/ 5

Outstanding

Listen to The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald free with an Audible trial Narrator, runtime & our audio review

Buy on Amazon

As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Prices may vary.

EDITION PUBLISHEDOctober 2025

Genres

Non-Fiction History

Themes

Grief and decades-delayed mourningThe rise of Great Lakes shipping as an industryWorking-class labor aboard freshwater freightersHow disaster hardens into folklore

The Gales of NovemberThe Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald

Name: The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald
Price: 16.99 USD
Availability: InStock
Author: John U. Bacon

John U. Bacon

John U. Bacon's The Gales of November turns the 1975 sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald into patient, deeply reported narrative nonfiction, tracing the Great Lakes shipping boom that built the ship before reconstructing its final hours through the families left behind. It's maritime history for readers who want the human cost as much as the storm.

The Review

Our take

On November 10, 1975, the freighter Edmund Fitzgerald went off the radar about seventeen miles short of the shelter at Whitefish Bay, and nothing more was heard from her. Her last message, sent minutes earlier, had been almost unremarkable: "We are holding our own." Then nothing. All twenty-nine men aboard died in a Lake Superior storm that nobody watching from shore fully understood until the ship stopped answering, and not one of their bodies was ever recovered from the water that took her down. That gap, the fifty years of not quite knowing what happened in the ship's last minutes, is what John U. Bacon spends this book closing, and the argument underneath The Gales of November is that you can't actually close it with wreckage and instrument readings. You close it with the people the ship left behind.

Bacon gets to the storm slowly, and on purpose. The opening stretch of the book is Great Lakes shipping as an industry: the postwar decades when the region powered the world economy, the freighters that carried it, and the jobs aboard, from captain and mates to wheelmen, oilers, and cooks. Readers hoping for the wreck on page one will be waiting a while, and it's a fair complaint that the run-up is long. But it does real work. By the time the Fitzgerald sails into the November storm, you know what a wheelman does, why a ship her age and size was considered safe, and why an experienced captain would keep pushing through weather he'd normally have waited out.

The reporting is the backbone. With no survivors and no black box, Bacon reconstructs the ship's final hours from what did survive: radio contact with a nearby freighter, weather data, and interviews with the crew's families and the people who knew them. This is his second book about a mass-casualty disaster, after The Great Halifax Explosion, and the practice shows. He can hold a wide historical lens and a close, personal one in the same chapter without dropping either. The technical material, how a laker takes on water in following seas, why a ship that size can break apart rather than simply capsize, gets explained clearly enough that a reader who's never set foot on a Great Lakes freighter can follow every call the crew made, and every one they never got the chance to make.

The one real drawback is pacing: the run-up is long before the Fitzgerald sails into the storm, and if you already know the outline from Gordon Lightfoot's song, that stretch can feel like circling before the dive. Bacon knows most readers arrive through that song, and he treats it as a way in to how a shipping disaster became national folklore. Then he leaves the song behind. The loss lands on the reporting alone.

Why you should read

Fans of deeply reported maritime disaster narratives
Readers who loved The Perfect Storm or Dead Wake
Great Lakes and Midwest history buffs
Anyone curious what's behind the Gordon Lightfoot song

What to expect

A wide-angle history before the storm arrives
Plainspoken explanations of ships, weather, and lake science
Family interviews carrying most of the emotional weight
A slow build that rewards patience

The wind speeds and wave heights are in here, rendered precisely, but they're not the reason the book holds up. The reason is the accounting of who was actually on that boat: working men with families onshore, reconstructed as more than names on a memorial or a line in a folk song. Fifty years on, The Gales of November makes its case plainly: a shipwreck stops being news and starts being history once someone finally asks what its crew were like before the lake took them. Bacon asked, and on the page, the twenty-nine of them stop being a list and become people again.

Reviewed by Ellis · How our reviews are written

Our verdict

4.5/ 5

Outstanding

Listen to The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald free with an Audible trial Narrator, runtime & our audio review

Buy on Amazon

As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Prices may vary.

Where to read or listen

Is there an audiobook of The Gales of November?: Yes. The Gales of November has an Audible audiobook edition, narrated by Johnny Heller.
Listen to The Gales of November free with an Audible trial
We earn from qualifying Amazon purchases.
Is The Gales of November on Kindle Unlimited?: No. The Gales of November was not included with Kindle Unlimited when we last checked on September 17, 2026.
How much does The Gales of November cost?: On Amazon: Kindle $16.99, Paperback $21.99, Hardcover $23.73. Prices as of September 28, 2026 at 5:21 PM EDT and may change.

Filed underHistory Browse the archive →

E-readersReading on your phone? See which e-reader to get.E-reader guide →

Common questions

What is The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald about?: On November 10, 1975, the freighter Edmund Fitzgerald went off the radar about seventeen miles short of the shelter at Whitefish Bay, and nothing more was heard from her. Her last message, sent minutes earlier, had been almost unremarkable: "We are holding our own." Then nothing. All twenty-nine…
Is The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald worth reading?: We scored The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald 4.5 out of 5. John U. Bacon's The Gales of November turns the 1975 sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald into patient, deeply reported narrative nonfiction, tracing the Great Lakes shipping boom that built the ship before reconstructing its final hours through the families left behind. It's…