Wake of the Perdido Star

The acclaimed novel now in trade paperback and ebook to coincide with the publication of Gene Hackman's new book Payback at Morning Peak (Pocket Books, July).

"A swashbuckling sea yarn." —San Francisco Chronicle

"A fascinating read you can't help but enjoy." —Clive Cussler

"Intriguing coming-of-age adventure full of information about early 19th century diving, salvage, and piracy." —Publishers Weekly

A classic tale of survival and revenge, this rousing novel of men, sailing ships, shipwrecks, pirates, and the sea, set in the early 1800s, is full of authentic nautical and historical detail, especially about diving and salvage operations of the period. It follows the exploits of Jack O'Reilly, a 17-year-old New England boy struggling toward manhood, whose sea adventures over three years take him to Cuba, around Cape Horn, to the South Sea islands, the Philippines, around the Cape of Good Hope, and finally back to Cuba and the Americas.

Wake of the Perdido Star is at once a morality tale, an action-packed saga of heroism, camaraderie, and survival, and a historical treatment of men at sea two hundred years ago.

Gene Hackman, the Academy AwardR?winning actor, always had a yearning to write, hanging around his grandfather’s small newspaper office in Danville, Illinois, when he was young. He published this first novel at age 70, co-written with his neighbor, leading underwater archaeologist, Daniel Lenihan, who also wrote the nonfiction adventure, Submerged, about his 25 years with the National Park Services, from Newmarket Press. The two went on to write two more novels, published by St. Martin’s, Justice for None and Escape from Andersonville: A Novel of the Civil War. Hackman’s solo novel, a western, will be published by Pocket Books in 2011.