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David Masiel’s first novel, 2182
Kilohertz, was one of the most greatly praised books of
2002. A riveting adventure of an unlikely hero’s quest
for personal redemption in frigid arctic waters, it earned
its author comparisons to such giants of nautical fiction
as Melville and Conrad. Now Masiel more than meets the promise
of his debut with a harrowing odyssey of love and betrayal
on the high seas—and in the shadowy corners
of the human heart.
At fifty-nine, Harold Snow has seen his
share of death. His baptism of fire came on his twenty-first
birthday, on a navy ship in the Coral Sea, when a Japanese
kamikaze pilot slammed into the deck. Years later, in the
aftermath of a typhoon in the Bay of Bengal, he lay awake
on a ship surrounded by thousands of drowned corpses and listened
to the sharks feed.
Now, serving as boatswain aboard the Tarshish,
a decrepit tanker whose papers are as suspect as its seaworthiness,
a weary Snow feels death creeping closer than ever. It’s
there in the lethal cargo of volatile chemicals the ship carries
in its leaky hold. It stares back from the brutal eyes of
the first mate, Bracelin, with whom Snow has embarked on a
desperate and highly illegal venture to steal a black-market
fortune. It’s in the dangerous welter of emotions he
feels for Beth, the beautiful half-English, half-Liberian
crewmate lusted after by every other male onboard. It clings
to young George Maciel, grandson of Snow’s oldest friend,
a seminary dropout whose disastrous arrival earns him a reputation
as a Jonah. And it’s there in the memory of Van Sickle,
a dead man who haunts Snow with visions of his own dark past.
Snow’s risky plans begin to go awry
when the Tarshish is refused entry to the Bay of San Francisco.
Forced to return to the open Pacific, Snow and Bracelin embark
on a scattershot voyage of shoestring improvisation that will
take the disintegrating hulk—sailing under
forged papers and a new name—from South America
to Africa. Along the way they will encounter hurricanes, crooked
customs officials, and tropical ports seething with vice and
revolution.
This outer voyage is mirrored by a dark
and twisted inner journey that will strip Snow down to his
bare essence as a man. And as George and Beth flaunt their
involvement, and Bracelin embraces cold-blooded murder, Snow
will face a stark choice between life and death, damnation
and redemption, at the western limit of the world.
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