Between 1845 and 1852, the Irish potato famine killed over one million people. In an attempt to escape starvation, almost a quarter of the Irish population emigrated – about two million souls – a vast number of them to North America. Whole families, many already half starved, boarded wooden sailing vessels and spent as long as two months in steerage. More than 100,000 of them would die aboard one of these “coffin ships.”

All Standing by Kathryn Miles (Free Press, Simon & Schuster, 2013) is the story of the one small ship that delivered all her passengers to Canada and the United States alive…