Storm at Seventeenth Street: A Novel of the Sindia

At 2:30 a.m. on December 15, 1901, a four-masted barque crashes onto the beach at Ocean City, New Jersey. Seventeen-year-old apprentice Daniel Kerr has heard the sounding that cannot be right. Before he can make an officer listen, Sindia strikes the sand broadside to a murderous surf. On shore, Nora Shaw wants something no one is prepared to give a printer's daughter: her own byline. When federal lifesavers fire a line through the gale and launch a surfboat into water no boat should cross, Nora records every failure, every act of courage-and the first whispers of treasure inside the stranded ship. All thirty-three people aboard survive. But rescue is only the beginning. As Sindia breaks apart before a fascinated town, Daniel and Nora are pulled into a reckoning that reaches from a British naval court to cargo buried beneath Seventeenth Street. Officers face blame. Salvors fight for possession. Stone figures become golden gods. Rumor hardens into legend while the truth sinks beneath the sand. Inspired by the documented wreck of Sindia and the extraordinary eight-trip surfboat rescue, Storm at Seventeenth Street is a sweeping historical novel of survival, courage, class, and the stories the sea refuses to surrender.