About The Book

SEA OF SHADOWS

We all have dreams about finding the perfect alternate life.

We close our eyes and imagine that we’re no longer inside the confines of our regular, humdrum existence, but basking instead in the sun on a desert island. Free. Maybe we can even hear the wind in the sails of our pleasure boat? Smell the suntan oil on our skin?

Jacob Stahl, an ordinary guy weighted down by a loveless marriage and obligations to his luckless brother Manny, has dreams like these. Their father, a car salesman with criminal aspirations, has just been found murdered. Manny leans on him to sell the estate, so they can both get out. Start afresh. But something makes Jacob hesitate. He wants to invest the money to stay put, and make his tiny map store in Brooklyn something extraordinary.

Jacob goes to his father’s wake. And faints dead away. When he wakes up inside the cargo hold of a strange ship, he has no idea how he ended up drugged and chained to the wall. And now he hears footsteps. Someone has paid the crew to make him disappear.

Saved by a female crew member, Jacob washes ashore on a small Caribbean island. It looks just like his fantasy: Waving palms. Azure-blue water. And nobody in sight. In a cruel twist of fate, he now has the life he wanted. His former existence has been erased. To make matters worse, he learns that a murder charge hangs over his head if he returns. The Coast Guard is looking for him. And so are the people who still want him dead.

Salvation comes in the form of a man who calls himself the Navigator, the only other resident on Dog Island. At first, the leathery old man is a comforting, fatherly, presence. He lets Jacob hide out and get his bearings. The Navigator, too, got out of the rat race and now lives a simple, fulfilling life. He even claims to be a teacher for wayward souls.

But soon, Jacob discovers clues on the island that can only mean he has landed in a far worse place than the watery grave his intended murderers had in mind for him. There is a fistful of passports in a sea-chest. An old airplane crying out an unspeakable crime. On a neighboring island, people whisper about a shipwreck and her vanished crew.

At the same time, the conspirators who sought Jacob’s death learn he’s still alive and set out to finish the job. Jacob’s wife, Laura, is only moments ahead of them, wanting to discover if the man she once fell in love with might still be found. The female crew member who saved Jacob also has her own, sinister reasons for befriending him again.

Now, faced with dangers coming at him from all directions, Jacob must escape the island and reclaim his life. But the secret he has uncovered beneath the pretty sand may not let him. His dead father whispers warnings into his fevered brain. And the tide is rising fast.

SEA OF SHADOWS is a mystery thriller about being careful what you daydream of.