A shipwright who reads damage for a living.
Nathan Hale was a Naval Intelligence officer. Now he lives aboard a wooden cutter in Port Townsend, Washington, repairs boats, and keeps a nightly radio check-in with a handful of veterans who need to say they are still alive. The series follows what happens when the pattern-reading he walked away from keeps finding him. No gadgets. Paper charts, cold water, and the cost of knowing when the official story is a lie.
The books
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Foul Ground · a story
A complete Nathan Hale story and the place to start. Free to newsletter readers; see the sign-up.
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Dead Reckoning · January 15, 2027
Coop misses the net. By morning his fishing boat is off the rocks and the story is already the kind people know how to ignore. What Nathan finds on the wreck is not weather or bad luck. It is workmanship. About the book →
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The Blood Knot · spring 2027
A thriller about exploitation that wears an honest face. A program that genuinely helps some of the veterans it gathers, which is why only a man who reads patterns of life at Nathan's depth can see what is underneath. A Pacific Northwest winter as an active force, and Sculpin doing the thing a rescue hull was built to do.
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False Light · summer 2027
Book three. More when there is more to tell.
Port Townsend and the Salish Sea
The books are set in and around the working waterfront of Port Townsend, the Strait of Juan de Fuca, Admiralty Inlet, and the San Juan Islands, with the weather, tides, and small-craft realities of those waters kept honest. Real places appear and are used fictitiously. Nathan's boat, Sculpin, is a heavy-displacement double-ender in the Colin Archer tradition, which matters more than once.
Start with Foul Ground
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