SALTWATER
He thought he was chasing a paycheck. Turns out, the past was chasing him.
When Fred Miller signs on for a day's pay aboard a rundown fishing trawler, it's out of desperation - not adventure. With his ex-wife slipping away in hospice and no money left to hold anything together, he takes a job with Ox Sanders, a ghost from the worst chapter of his life. But if Fred can swallow his pride one more time and keep his head down, maybe he can get through this next voyage.
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But the ocean doesn't forget. Neither do the dead.
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Out past the harbor, time folds in on itself. The boat groans. The crew is uneasy. The new deckhand - quiet and watchful Pete - seems to know more than he should. As injuries mount and Ox refuses to return to shore, Fred begins to see this trip for what it really is: not work, not rescue, but reckoning. Because the sea keeps its secrets. So do old men.
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Packed with saltwater grit and buried sins, this taut nautical noir is a slow-burn descent into long-suffering guilt and overdue vengeance. Not everyone will make it back to shore.
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Sean Conway's new novel takes readers back to the mass market paperback thrillers of his 1970s youth, particularly Peter Benchley's oceanic tales (Jaws, The Deep, and The Island), with a little bit of Arthur Herzog (Orca, The Swarm) and Thomas Harris (Black Sunday) thrown in for seasoning. Saltwater is, at its core, an homage to the fantastical suspense stories that made him fall in love with books in the first place.
