War & Military Fiction

Hatteras Light

Name: Hatteras Light
Author: Philip Gerard
ISBN: 9780684187303

by Philip Gerard

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Overview

Set off the treacherous Outer Banks of North Carolina during the final days of the First World War, Hatteras Light is the compelling story of the dedicated keepers of the Hatteras lighthouse and their tightly knit community. For generations these men have drawn their livelihood from the sea, served in the rescue of shipwreck victims, and gaurded seagoers from the hazardous shoals. Their wives and daughters endure a difficult, solitary life, their fortitude constantly tested. Loyal to one another and to a traditional way of life, the islanders are suspicious of outsiders and censorious of those who leave.

The insular world of these Hatterasmen disrupts when a German U-boat reveals itself offshore, indiscriminately sinking civilian and military vessels, challenging the courage of the lifesavers, and signaling the dawning of a darker, less honorable age.

Over a few crucial days, we become intimate with these men and women, and with the German officers aboard U-55 who have made the islanders' lives hell.

What emerges is an adventure story full of wisdom and compassion, a novel unfailingly accurate in portraying the struggle of man and sea, man against man, and of men and women. Based on historical fact, Phillip Gerard's novel is a powerful book whose storytelling represents the most human tendencies in life and art.

About the Author, Philip Gerard

Philip Gerard was born in 1955 and grew up in Newark, Delaware. He attended St. Andrew's School in Middletown, Delaware. At the University of Delaware, he earned a B.A. in English and Anthropology, graduating Phi Beta Kappa. After college he lived in Burlington, Vermont, tending bar and writing freelance articles, before returning to newspaper work in Delaware and then going west to study fiction writing at the Arizona writers workshop with Robert Houston, Vance Bourjaily, Richard Shelton, and others. He earned his M.F.A. in Creative Writing in 1981 and almost immediately joined the faculty at Arizona State University as a Visiting Assistant Professor and later as Writer in Residence. He remained at ASU until 1986, then taught for a brief time at Lake Forest College in Illinois before migrating to coastal North Carolina, where he had spent many happy summers during his teenage years roaming the Outer Banks of Hatteras and Ocracoke Islands.
In keeping with his conviction that writers should give something back to their profession, he has served on the Board of Trustees of the North Carolina Writers Network and from 1995 until 1998 on the Board of Directors of the Associated Writing Programs, for two of those years as President. He has been appointed by Governor Mike Easley to a second three-year term on the North Carolina Arts Council.

Gerard, an avid musician, incorporates bluegrass, folk, country, and original compositions into his readings, playing six and twelve-string guitar, dobro, banjo, and pedal steel guitar. He lives on Whiskey Creek near the Intracoastal Waterway and sails his sloop Suspense on the Atlantic Ocean.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

First novelist Gerard obviously has great affection for the lore of the seafaring people of Hatteras Island off the coast of North Carolina, but this historical fiction about lighthouse keepers and sailors threatened by a German U-boat toward the end of World War I is just a mediocre sea adventure whose passionate figures are like watered-down Thomas Hardy characters. After an initial sighting, dismissed as improbable by the villagers, the insular Hatteras community is shocked by the sinking of an American ship by the German vessel. Readers must believe that a small naval craft is the only ship President Wilson's entire armed forces would spare to challenge an enemy submarine operating just yards from the American shore. Between the first encounter and the final face-off with the U-boat, a sailor and his son drift unrescued in a disabled fishing boat, romances criss-cross, and the islanders resent the Yankee skipper of the submarine chaser. Perhaps this work could have been sharpened into a boy's adventure. (October 15)

Library Journal

In the late spring of 1918 a prowling U-boat makes the always treacherous waters off Hatteras Island even more dangerous. Its presence creates a crisis among the lighthouse keepers, lifesaving crews, and fishing families who inhabit the island. The Navy can provide them with little help, and if they are to rid their shores of this strange new menace the Hatteras folk may have to betray the very values that give their lives meaning. With its refreshingly different setting and its provocative moral questions, this first novel succeeds admirably as a tale of wartime adventure. Unfortunately, it flounders somewhat when its author tries too hard to make it also a social commentary about the forces that bind both families and communities together. Nevertheless, a worthwhile purchase and worth recommending to readers of nautical and/or adventure stories. Charles Michaud, Turner Free Lib., Randolph Mass.