Shanghaied by David Paul Collins Selected for Barne & Noble Rising Start Collection
Online, December 8, 2011 (Newswire.com) - The novel begins when Jack Sligo, 15, runs away from a loving Boston Irish family hoping to get a summer job on a cruise ship. He has no luck on the gritty docks of New York and hitchhikes to a seaport in Alabama. While looking for a ship Jack meets two German seamen and accepts their invitation for drinks and a taste of night life. Hours later, Jack wakes up racked with pain on a ship far at sea, drugged, kidnapped, "shanghaied" aboard a monstrous African freighter, the S/S Iron Prince. Unbeknownst to Jack, a Cayman Islander who is the ship's bo'sun, Manor Nelson, protects him from members of the crew who would have made Caribbean pirates seem like drawing room gentlemen.
Jack Sligo is the narrative voice of author David Paul Collins. In his new book Shanghaied, Collins weaves a tale based on his own experiences in the 1950's aboard a Liberian merchant ship plying the oceans of the world.
Kirkus Review: "The author writes with authenticity, having lived the life he relates in an entertaining, poignant coming-of-age memoir."
"In this refreshingly honest account by first-time author David Paul Collins, a teenage boy from a good Irish home gets more than he bargained for as he is literally shanghaied onto a cargo ship. Yet his indentured labor turns into an adventure worthy of Captain Ahab's mates, and his longing for family and home is unexpectedly soothed by the camaraderie that only seamen in stormy troubles could attain. Beginning innocently in Boston on an unremarkable spring day in 1956, Collins' unplanned departure lands him in a rough vessel where everyone else is older and darker-both in spirit and in skin color. Shocked and terrified, young Collins takes us with him through tears and laughter. He faces one impossible challenge after another, and with him we experience the growing pains that literally pull him from a dreamer to a dare-doer as he sails from one exotic harbor to the next. This book is a literary journey worth taking, a journey as real as a slap on the face, as hot as a stiff swig of rum, as smelly as the hold of an old ship, and as loud as the howling wind in the middle of the Atlantic. Collins writes with a deft hand that doesn't try to smooth over the sailors' coarse language or their sinful habits. Perhaps because he doesn't attempt to make it nice in any way, his tale turns out as deliciously crusty as the salt on the bow railing. It is a fit of writing few oceangoing storytellers have managed to achieve. Bravo!" Avraham Azrieli, Author of The Jerusalem Inception
David Paul Collins' new book, Shanghaied, has been recognized in the Barnes & Noble Rising Star Special Collection through December 2011.
For more information, please visit http://ShanghaiedtheBook.com and the blog http://JackSligo.com. Email the author at David@JackSligo.com.