Synopses & Reviews
Driven from his rural home for insulting the parish priest, Midshipman Jake Thomas boards a freighter in New Orleans, entering the exotic world of foreign ports and life on the high seas. Jake plunges hungrily into the adventureof a sea-voyage, finding it a separate existence: authentic, ruthless, unpredictable. The voyage becomes an odyssey where he meets others pursuing love and community, the very things he is running from.
At sea, the stern captain teaches Jake navigation, encouraging him to master the three star fix, even as Jake abandons his moral compass in the sultry back-alleys of the South American ports. InValparaiso, the mariner's Mecca, Jake loses his innocence, descending into an intoxicating labyrinth of drugs, pleasure and violence. "Music spilled into the street and people danced in the doorways, in the alleys; their shadows maniacal. Beautiful women in all manner of erotic dress languished outside the bars." Jake's journey home is a perilous voyage into his troubled soul. Jake has marveled at wonders he has seen but now explores the inner landscape of his own troubled soul where peace of mind is illusive and where one's humanness is at once mysterious and full of beauty.
Synopsis
Exiled from home for offending the village priest, young Jake Thomas boards a freighter in New Orleans, entering an exotic world of a ship and the sea. As the vessel sails into the sultry Southern Hemisphere, Jake encounters bizarre characters and courageously faces danger, but falters when the voyage turns into a spiritual and emotional odyssey.
Under the stern navigational tutelage of the captain and second mate, Jake, a midshipman, struggles to master the three star fix even as he abandons his moral compass in the back-alleys of the South American ports. In Valparaiso, a mariner's Mecca, Jake follows the wicked sailor Fletcher into an intoxicating labyrinth of pelasure and violence, resulting in heartrendering retribution homebound.
On Jake's maiden voyage, he delights in the wonders of the wide outer world, while navigating a rocky inner passage of beauty, desire, and love.