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The Western Limit of the World
David Masiel
a harrowing odyssey of love and betrayal on the high seas?and in the shadowy corners of the human heart.
Random House
December 2005
304 pages ISBN: 1400061628 Hardcover
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Fiction
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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