My Danish Sweetheart: A Novel. Volume 2 of 3
1891
Hugh Tregarthen and Helga Nielsen have survived the unsurvivable, pulled from a shattered raft into a desperate new reality. Now they cling to the deck of the Early Morn, a barely-seaworthy lugger captained by three rough boatmen whose rough code of loyalty may be the only thing standing between them and the hungry Atlantic. Abraham, Jacob, and Tommy are bound for Australia, but what they carry aboard their small vessel is far more precious than cargo: two castaways whose future hangs on the wind, the waves, and the uncertain mercy of men they barely know. As Hugh recounts the terror of the wreck to his rescuers, something begins to shift in the cramped quarters of the Early Morn. Helga, alone among strangers in a woman's body on a man's sea, must navigate not only the vastness of the ocean but the delicate politics of survival. Hope flickers against the horizon, but the Atlantic is vast and indifferent, and home is nowhere close. William Clark Russell, the Victorian era's undisputed master of the sea novel, renders the maritime world with an authenticity that makes the salt spray tasteable and the danger visceral. This is romance forged in extremity, where trust is measured in deeds rather than words, and the only certainty is the next wave.
