The Far Blue (A Novel)

The bestselling author of The Dog Stars returns with a riveting novel of one man’s resilience against the ocean’s ferocious power as a husband finds himself swept out to sea off the coast of Maine and, while fighting for his very survival, encounters the looters and profiteers who seek to enrich themselves amid the chaos of the storm.

“Get off the island. This is a bad one.” When Jordi Stohlquist’s phone rings in the pre-dawn hours, the ocean looks calm and glassy as a postcard. His cottage, a cabin perched above the sea, is stout as a lighthouse on a promontory, and Jordi finds it hard to believe that some bad weather could destroy what nearly two centuries of Nor’easters could not.

Still, everyone on the island is ordered to evacuate, and so Jordi wakes his wife, Jin, and drives her and their big dog, Mancha, down to the ferry. He kisses her on the pier, surrounded by hundreds of island residents, and Jin begs Jordi to join her on the boat, but he assures her that he’ll be fine and returns to storm proof the cottage they bought a mere four months ago.

As the swells begin to roll in—eight feet, now ten—whitecaps spuming off the tops, waves exploding against the rocks, Jordi boards up the windows and ties down all he can, stopping only when a massive truck skids up to the cottage, disgorging four armed lobstermen in foul weather gear. In a shocking act of self-defense, Jordi is cast into the open ocean, and what follows—at sea, on a strange island, amid the wreckage of a ship, and deep in his own heart—is a thrilling story of survival against all odds.