A well-crafted historical pulse-pounder —Publishers Weekly
Hidden Cargo is a triumph. Lloyd is making his way onto the shelf with other masters of the genre Patrick O'Brian and C.S. Forester. This is Lloyd's best and most satisfying book yet. —David Ignatius, columnist for The Washington Post and author of The Paladin.
Lloyd’s pacing is pitch-perfect and makes Hidden Cargo a thrilling read
for salts of all ages. —Historical Novel Society
Available for pre-order now! Click here to order from Amazon
Five months after the end of the Civil War, Acting Navy Lieutenant Everett Townsend is awaiting discharge in Key West. The war has left him bitter with little direction. It had probably cost him his relationship with the woman he loved, Emma Carpenter. Returning from a routine supply mission from Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas, he and his men get caught in a bad hurricane. In the middle of the storm, Townsend spots a shipwreck in the Marquesas Keys. When they investigate the next day, they discover the grisly sight of a cargo hold filled with dead bodies. The men had been locked inside.
When Townsend reports this unsettling incident to his preoccupied Naval commander in Key West, he finds himself involved in an investigation of mysterious disappearances of freedmen, former slaves from Louisiana, Alabama, and the Florida coast. Some army officials suspect foul play, but there is no proof. When Townsend and his men are sent to investigate the murder of an American sailor in Cuba, the Navy lieutenant realizes he is being pulled into the dangerous world of Cuban politics. Even as he works to uncover a conspiracy behind these disappearances, he is torn between the Cuban-American woman he loves and his elderly Spanish grandmother who wants him to help her run the family sugar plantation. Townsend is forced to grapple with the meaning of justice and his own ideals as he comes face to face with his own family’s close ties to slavery.
