The Immortals: The World War II Story of Five Fearless Heroes,

the Sinking of the Dorchester, and an Awe-Inspiring Rescue

Synopsis

During World War II, four chaplains were assigned to the SS Dorchester with more than 900 men on board. Alexander Goode, a Jewish rabbi; John Washington, a Catholic priest; George Fox, a Methodist minister; and Clark Poling, a Baptist minister, all offered comfort, reassurances, and prayers along with a warning from the captain that a German submarine was hunting their convoy.

Thoroughly researched and told in an engrossing nonfiction narrative, this true story alternates between accounts told from the perspective of the Nazi U-boat captain and his crew (as found in their journals and later interviews) and survivors from the Dorchester who credit the four chaplains with saving their lives after their ship was torpedoed.

The celebrated story of the men who became known as the Immortal Chaplains is now joined for the first time in print by the largely untold story of another hero: Charles Walter David Jr. A young Black petty officer aboard a coast guard cutter traveling with the Dorchester, Charles bravely dived into the glacial water over and over again, even with hypothermia setting in, to try to rescue those the chaplains had inspired to never give up.

Page-turning and inspiring, The Immortals explores the power of both faith and sacrifice and powerfully narrates the lives of five heroic men who believed in something greater than themselves, giving their all for people of vastly different beliefs and backgrounds.

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About the Author

Steven T. Collis is the author of the nonfiction books Deep Conviction and The Immortals and the novel At Any Cost. He is a storyteller at heart, but in his other life, he is also a law professor at the University of Texas School of Law, where he is the faculty director of the Bech-Loughlin First Amendment Center and Texas’s Law & Religion Clinic.

Prior to joining the faculty at Texas, he was the Olin-Darling Research Fellow in the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School and was an equity partner at Holland & Hart LLP, where he chaired the firm’s nationwide religious institutions and First Amendment practice group.

​Before embarking on his legal and writing career, Steven graduated magna cum laude from the University of Michigan Law School, where he was elected to the Order of the Coif and served as an editor on the Michigan Law Review and the Michigan Journal of Race and Law. Steven also holds an M.F.A. in creative writing from Virginia Commonwealth University, where he served as the associate editor of the literary journal Blackbird. He completed his undergraduate studies, with university honors, at Brigham Young University.

Originally from New Mexico, Steven lives in Austin with his wife and children.

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