San Francisco journalist Jeanne Carstensen shines a light on the humanity underlying a recent historic event in “A Greek Tragedy: One Day, a Deadly Shipwreck, and the Human Cost of the Refugee Crisis (Simon and Schuster, 288 pages, $28.99, March 25, 2025),” which she spent six years researching. On Oct. 28, 2015, in the height of the Syrian refugee crisis, a boat filled with immigrants from Turkey shipwrecked off the Greek island of Lesvos, resulting in the one of the largest crises since World War II and the death of hundreds of men, women and children.
Carstensen, an award-winning reporter for The World and Foreign Policy, was there that day: “It was the worst day in a series of terrible days. The event overwhelmed the island and the locals,” says Carstensen, who is appearing in talks in Corte Madera, Sebastopol and Oakland this month to promote the book.
Because she’s done so much reporting on the area, Carstensen says she felt haunted by that day. “These complex situations are happening at border zones everywhere, including the U.S. border. I thought if I told one story really deeply, it would give us a window into other situations.”
The author, who also has written for The New York Times, The Nation and Salon, found the survivors’ stories very moving. “It’s not something you get to learn about from people very often—what it’s like to be out there in the water when rescuers aren’t getting to you.” Those stranded included families and children who couldn’t locate their parents.
Response from locals impressed Carstensen. “I heard incredible stories, like about the coroner’s wife, who was given a little boy whose body temperature was so low, they thought he was going to die. She held onto him and kept him next to her skin.” Carstensen says the woman, who had three of her own children, thought, “’This is another of my children, and I’m not going to let him die.’ She held him close for days, and he didn’t die.”
Another story involves a restaurant owner who every day picked up discarded refugee clothing and washed it, preparing clean clothes for incoming refugees in need. “Small gestures like this were inspiring in the midst of a lot of tragedy and failure on the part of the government,” Carstensen says.
Carstensen believes that this kind of tragedy could happen to any of us. “We’re not as far away as it may seem,” she says. People she interviewed included a loan officer from Kabul, a 13-year-old girl whose father was a journalist, and a Syrian with a psychology degree who worked at a high school counselor. “Survivors told me they never expected to be in that situation of being a refugee and having to risk their lives and pay smugglers. We think, ‘Oh, it will never happen here,’ but it could happen to any of us in a border area.”
The book is certainly timely. All of these small moments of decency are important to remember in a time when our politics around immigration has a lot of emphasis on cruelty. “I think my book points out another path,” Carstensen says.
“We have to decide, are we going to turn toward people and help or are we going to turn away?” Carstensen says. “What I saw in this situation is that most people left to their own devices—when they saw someone in need, they would at least do something decent.”
Carstensen appears at 4 p.m. April 5 at Book Passage in Corte Madera, 5 p.m. April 6 at the Sebastopol Cultural Center and 7 p.m. April 10 at A Great Good Place for Books in Oakland. For her full event schedule, visit jeannecarstensen.net.
Linda Lenhoff’s latest novel, *Your Actual Life May Vary, is available for preorder from Santa Fe Writers Project. Learn more here.
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