Ebook457 pages7 hours
Wake of the Perdido Star: A Novel
By Gene Hackman and Daniel Lenihan
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
3/5
()
About this ebook
The Oscar-winning actor teams up with a shipwreck diving expert to spin a cinematic tale of nineteenth century pirates, shipwrecks, and sea adventure.
In 1805, seventeen-year-old Jack O’Reilly sets sail with his parents from America to Cuba aboard the Perdido Star. But when tragedy strikes shortly after their arrival, Jack makes a desperate escape, rejoining the departing Star as a member of the crew. On his yearslong journey around the globe, he only grows more obsessed with avenging the murder of his parents.
By the time he returns to Cuba, Jack has faced storms, shipwreck, and deadly battles. He leads a renegade band who call themselves the Right Honourable Brotherhood of the Shipwrecked Men of the Star. But having seen and suffered so much, what is Jack now willing to sacrifice for revenge?
Hackman and Lenihan infuse this swashbuckling tale with authentic details of 19th century seafaring and deep sea diving. The hero Jack is joined by a colorful cast of characters, including Paul Le Maire, the aristocratic intellectual who earns Jack’s friendship; Quince, the first mate, Jack’s mentor and defender; Quen-Li, the mysterious Chinese cook whose skills extend beyond the galley; Hansumbob, the ship’s poet, whose simplicity belies a wisdom born of the heart; and the greedy Count de Silva, whose charm masks a murderous soul.
In 1805, seventeen-year-old Jack O’Reilly sets sail with his parents from America to Cuba aboard the Perdido Star. But when tragedy strikes shortly after their arrival, Jack makes a desperate escape, rejoining the departing Star as a member of the crew. On his yearslong journey around the globe, he only grows more obsessed with avenging the murder of his parents.
By the time he returns to Cuba, Jack has faced storms, shipwreck, and deadly battles. He leads a renegade band who call themselves the Right Honourable Brotherhood of the Shipwrecked Men of the Star. But having seen and suffered so much, what is Jack now willing to sacrifice for revenge?
Hackman and Lenihan infuse this swashbuckling tale with authentic details of 19th century seafaring and deep sea diving. The hero Jack is joined by a colorful cast of characters, including Paul Le Maire, the aristocratic intellectual who earns Jack’s friendship; Quince, the first mate, Jack’s mentor and defender; Quen-Li, the mysterious Chinese cook whose skills extend beyond the galley; Hansumbob, the ship’s poet, whose simplicity belies a wisdom born of the heart; and the greedy Count de Silva, whose charm masks a murderous soul.
Author
Gene Hackman
Gene Hackman is the author of two novels and coauthor of three other novels. He is a two-time Academy Award–winning actor with lauded performances in such films as Unforgiven, Bonnie and Clyde, The French Connection, Mississippi Burning, and The Poseidon Adventure, among others. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with his wife and two German shepherds.
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Reviews for Wake of the Perdido Star
Rating: 2.769230769230769 out of 5 stars
3/5
13 ratings1 review
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I picked up this book because I’d seen it mentioned as a “swashbuckling sea adventure” with plenty of action and piracy.
However, reading it, I was reminded that when I was a kid I went through a big phase of reading lots of historical nautical books, both fiction and non-fiction. (There were lots of sailors and sea voyages in my family history, which is where the interest stemmed from… check out THIS BOOK, it features my distant relative getting cannibalized…) So, although I don’t know HOW to sail or anything like that, I feel that I’ve got a pretty good concept of what life was like on a 19th-century sailing ship. And, in this book, I just wasn’t feeling it. I didn’t notice many inaccuracies (other than that I found it hard to believe that on a ship of 26 hands, there would be sailors that ‘didn’t know each other’ after any amount of voyaging…) but I just wanted more details of shipboard life… but, this is a book that doesn’t get bogged down in details or verisimilitude… it actually, I think, would make a very good movie – and I’m sure that must have been in Gene Hackman’s mind when he was working on it. It’s got just about the level of depth and characterization of your average big-budget movie, with plenty of action scenes, local color and exotic locations (all politically-corrected, to a certain degree.)
The story has to do with a young man who takes to the sea after his parents are murdered by a Cuban Count who seizes the family property. He makes friends with another young man, a victim of shipwreck, and together they have seagoing adventures, as he waits for his chance to take revenge… The checklist of Things That Happen At Sea occurs, fairly predictably – the standout scenes are diving scenes, which (considering that Lenihan is a deep-sea diving expert) seem technically very believable, if contextually very unlikely.
Book preview
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