A United States Midshipman Afloat

The year is 1908. Two fresh-faced midshipmen, Philip Perry and Sydney Monroe, step aboard the great battleship U.S.S. Connecticut at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, their naval commissions newly inked, their futures as vast and uncertain as the ocean before them. Yates Stirling renders their world with meticulous authenticity: the clang of steel decks, the hierarchy of officers, the strange intimacy of men living cheek by jowl aboard a warship. But beneath the routines of drills and duty simmers a dangerous undercurrent. Philip's new divisional officer, Jules Lazar, carries old grudges, and when a harrowing lifeboat accident at sea brings everything to a head, Philip must choose between obedience and survival, between loyalty and his own instinct to live. This is a novel about the making of a man within the iron discipline of the Navy, where a single moment can shatter a career or forge a character.