08/10/2015
Early in this timely and harrowing thriller from Addison (The Garden of Burning Sand), lawyer Daniel Parker and his troubled piano-playing teenage son, Quentin, are sailing their way toward a better relationship when pirates board their boat in the Indian Ocean. Enter Paul Derrick, a love-starved FBI hostage negotiator, and his twin sister, Megan, a hot-shot attorney. Ismail Ibrahim, the pirates’ second-in-command, wants money to free his kidnapped sister, Yasmin, but he’s a morally questionable character who’s hard to care about. Daniel’s violinist wife, Vanessa, and his father, a Washington insider, add emotional complications. Although the details won’t be revealed for hundreds of pages, the basic structure of what will happen is clear from the get-go. Very little is what it seems, thanks to double crosses, agency jurisdictional disputes, and passages describing the blood-soaked history of Somalia. Fortunately, the soul-healing power of music lightens the story. Agent: Dan Raines, Creative Trust Inc. (Oct.)
The Tears of Dark Water
Narrated by Korey Jackson
Corban AddisonUnabridged — 18 hours, 6 minutes
The Tears of Dark Water
Narrated by Korey Jackson
Corban AddisonUnabridged — 18 hours, 6 minutes
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Overview
Editorial Reviews
4 1/2 stars. 'An exquisitely worded, thoughtful novel about the meaning of family, commitment and love. Motives are unclear throughout; it’s difficult to tell who is good and who is bad, and often there’s a mixture of both, just like real life. Definitely a book to be savored.'
An exquisitely worded, thoughtful novel about the meaning of family, commitment, and love. . . . Definitely a book to be savored.
2015-07-29
When six characters have their lives changed forever by an act of piracy, they must decide who is to blame—and what can be forgiven. Daniel and Vanessa Parker are a wealthy, successful couple who have drifted apart. When their only son, Quentin, gets into some trouble at school, father and son undertake an epic sailing trip in the Pacific Ocean, leaving their flawed lives back in Annapolis. Their idyll is spoiled when their sailboat is overtaken by seven Somali pirates, led by the intelligent but desperate Ismail, who will do anything to secure his younger sister's rescue from the clutches of her extremist husband. The government's top hostage negotiator, Paul Derrick, is brought in to work against the pirates' increasing agitation with an aggressive U.S. military—and with each other. Addison (The Garden of Burning Sand, 2014, etc.) juggles six different perspectives in this suspenseful, sprawling story and moves back and forth between Africa and America to cover the kidnapping, negotiations, and subsequent trial. As with his previous two novels, Addison's attention is focused squarely on the larger message behind the story and on instructing the reader about Somali culture in order to humanize those who are brought low by the war and terror of its recent history. This novel's push to teach readers a lesson is perhaps overly evident throughout; at one point Derrick says, "He may be an enemy. But that doesn't make him less of a human being." This can result in Addison's stretching his readers' belief for the sake of creating sympathetic characters, especially in the novel's courtroom climax. And while these characters, especially the Americans, all feel slightly interchangeable—they are all well-educated and gifted musicians who drink fancy wine and drive fancy cars—the conclusions they reach about the importance of forgiveness and the need for cross-cultural understanding could not be more timely. A fast-paced thriller that puts its humanitarian moral at the forefront.
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940170731473 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Recorded Books, LLC |
| Publication date: | 10/13/2015 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
Read an Excerpt
The Tears of Dark Water
A Novel
By Corban Addison
Thomas Nelson
Copyright © 2015 Regulus Books, LLC.All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7180-4220-2
CHAPTER 1
The Way of the Gun
* * *
In those days there was no king. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.
— The Book of Judges
Daniel
Mahé Island, Seychelles
November 7, 2011
Daniel Parker woke with a start, a line of perspiration on his brow. He looked around the darkened cabin of the sailboat, searching for her face, but she was gone. He shook his head, as if the sudden motion could shake off the anguish of the dream, but the chains of the past bound him to her, as did the vague whisper of a prayer that she was wrong. Her words were stuck in his mind, like a prophecy playing in an endless loop, the truth of half a life spoken as if from the beginning.
It won't last.
The declaration had escaped her lips without effort, but not uncharitably. She had smiled at him when she spoke, her green eyes dancing above the dimples in her cheeks, her candlelight dress and red-brown Bissolotti violin luminous in the concert hall.
Nothing does. Why would you expect us to be different?
He looked out the porthole at the lights of Victoria Harbour, sparkling in the twilight before the dawn. The sky was the color of ash, but the stars were beginning to retreat on the coattails of the night. He listened to the main halyard knocking against the mast and the gurgling sounds of cavitation as the Renaissance bobbed on the occasional swell. At least we'll have a decent wind, he thought, throwing back the thin sheet and scooting out of his rack.
He placed his feet on the polished mahogany floorboards and took a slow breath, relishing the smoothness of the wood on his skin. He had loved the feeling of going barefoot on deck since he was a boy handling lines and trimming sails on his father's Valiant 40. But he had paid a price for it. The soles of his feet were a patchwork of scars.
He opened the door to the saloon and slipped stealthily into the living quarters. Dim light from the harbor filtered in through the curtains covering the windows, but the saloon and galley were still shrouded in darkness. He stepped around the weak spots in the floor and took care not to wake his son, Quentin, who was sleeping on the settee berth across from the dining table.
He flipped on the accent lights in the galley. The LEDs glowed softly under the cabinet rails, illuminating the gas stove and granite countertops. He heated a pot of water and filled his French press, waiting precisely four minutes before pouring the steaming coffee into his Naval Academy mug. His father had given him the mug at the rechristening ceremony of the Renaissance, along with a hearty laugh and a slap on the back. It was as much a gag as a gift, for Daniel had gone to Boston College instead.
He opened the main hatch and inhaled the moist island air. Across the water sat the city of Victoria, tucked like a jeweled blanket between mountains of granite and the hem of the sea. He rummaged in the locker by the stairs and retrieved his writing chest — a genuine gift from his father, an antique from Zanzibar, in honor of their voyage. He collected the mug and went topside.
On an ordinary morning the sight of sailboats at anchor crowned by winking stars would have brought a smile to Daniel's face. But this morning he scarcely noticed them, troubled as he was by the portents of the dream. He sat down in the cockpit and put the mug on the bench beside him, opening the carved wooden chest and laying out paper and pen on the life raft container, which he used as a writing surface. He lit a battery-powered lantern and took a sip of coffee, struggling to suppress the dread her words had inspired. They were wrong. They had to be. The smile, the dress, the violin, the concert hall — all were exactly as he remembered. But her words had carried a different meaning. They had been ironic, not tragic; a welcome, not a farewell.
His mind raced on the current of memory. New York City. April 1993. Daffodils blooming in Central Park, buds on the dogwoods and azaleas, a blaze of sunlight chasing away the early-spring chill. He had seen the handbills posted all over Columbia University — the Juilliard Orchestra performing at Carnegie Hall. He wouldn't have given the concert a passing thought, if not for the photograph of the soloist. Her name was Vanessa Stone, and she was a student at Columbia, not Juilliard — a double major in biology and music. She was pretty but not remarkably so in New York City's hall of mirrors. It was her expression that made him pause — then halt — his mad rush to a law school seminar to which he was already late. He took down one of the flyers and studied her more carefully. She held her violin tenderly, her bow just touching the strings, and looked at the camera almost curiously. The question in her eyes was as frank as it was astonishing: Why are you staring at me?
Two days later, Daniel walked into the grand lobby of Carnegie Hall clutching the handbill and the face he couldn't forget. His seat was on the parquet level of the Stern Auditorium and close to the stage. He settled into his chair and listened to the musicians tune their instruments, annoyed at the butterflies crowding his stomach. At last, she appeared with the conductor at her side. She was dressed in a diaphanous gown that complemented her auburn hair. She nodded to the audience and then placed her violin beneath her chin, waiting for her cue.
His eyes never left hers from the beginning of the performance to the end. The music was Beethoven, his first and only violin concerto, and she played it immaculately, even the most virtuosic passages in the Kreisler cadenza. At the close of the third movement, the audience gave her a rousing ovation. She received it with an almost perfunctory bow and exited the stage with a swiftness that confirmed Daniel's suspicion. She had come to be heard, not to be seen. The magic was in the violin.
The receiving line outside the auditorium was long, and Daniel took his place at the end. While he waited, he tried on phrases like costumes until he felt more confused than confident. When the moment came and she offered her hand, thanking him for coming, he spoke purely by instinct.
"You play like your name," he said.
"I beg your pardon?" she asked, taking back her hand.
"Vanessa in the old Greek. It means 'butterfly.'" Something changed in her eyes, but she didn't reply, so he forged ahead. "It's like you're somewhere else — in the air, dancing with the sun."
She stared at him for long seconds before her lips spread into a smile. "It doesn't last," she said, surprising him with her candor. "It fades like everything else."
"But it's why you play, isn't it? Even when it makes you uncomfortable."
He saw it then: the inquisitive look she wore in the flyer in his pocket. She tilted her head and her eyes glittered in the light. "Do I know you?"
He shook his head. "I'm Daniel."
"Are you a student?" she asked, trying to place him anyway.
"Columbia Law," he affirmed.
"Law. I would have guessed poetry." Suddenly, she caught the eye of the conductor as he bid farewell to his last guest. "I'm sorry. I have to go. It's nice to meet you."
She said it almost regretfully, and he took courage. "When will you play again?"
He saw it a second time, her instinctive curiosity. "I'm graduating in May."
He nodded. "So am I."
She glanced at the conductor again. "I really have to go. There's an after party."
"Right," he replied, feeling the moment slipping away.
Then she said the words that changed his life. "I practice at Schapiro Hall. Maybe I'll see you there sometime."
* * *
Daniel picked up his pen in the waning dark and began to write her a letter. "Dearest V: Is love like the body? Does it begin to die the day it is born? Is it like the breath of transcendence you feel when the Bissolotti is in your hands — evanescent, a chasing after the wind?" The words flowed onto the page like spilled ink as the sky brightened and the dawn came. The first light caught him by surprise and pierced his eyes when he looked toward the east. He took another sip of his now lukewarm coffee and watched the sun rise above the distant masts of a large ship. The advent of day transformed him, lifting his spirits. He looked down at the unfinished sentence before him and thought, She doesn't need this.
He folded up the pages he had written and placed them in the chest. He took out fresh paper and began again, telling his wife about Quentin, about climbing boulders with him on the island of La Digue, about the transformation he had seen since they set sail so many months ago. He signed his name and wrote out the address on an envelope. It would take three weeks to reach her. By then he and Quentin would be in South Africa — her last chance to join them before the long passage to Brazil.
"Morning, Dad," Quentin said, appearing in the companionway dressed in board shorts and a T-shirt, his wavy brown hair past his shoulders now. He had been growing it long since he met Ariadne in the South Pacific. The Australian girl had transformed everything about him — well, the girl and the sea. Every day, he seemed surer of himself, less afraid. He was even calling himself Quentin again, after years of going by "Quent." The eighteen-year-old boy was slowly becoming a man.
"I checked the Passage Weather report," Quentin said, taking a seat in the cockpit. "Steady winds out of the north at eight to ten knots, seas less than a meter, and no tropical activity in the forecast. We should make decent time with the gennaker up."
"Ten days if it holds," Daniel replied. "More if it doesn't."
Quentin pointed at the letter. "Do you think she's going to come?"
"She might," Daniel said, giving voice to a hope he didn't feel.
Quentin placed a postcard beside the envelope. "I wrote her something, too."
"Good man," Daniel said. "I'll get the harbormaster to mail them."
"Hey, did you hear about the Navy ship?" Quentin asked. "It put in yesterday with a bunch of Somali pirates. They're going to be tried here."
Daniel was intrigued. "An American ship?"
Quentin nodded. "The Gettysburg. François says it's a cruiser."
Daniel looked toward the sunrise and focused on the silhouette of the ship just visible above the port. He saw details he had missed earlier: the gray paint; the twin superstructures, bristling with masts and antennae; the raked bow and athletic lines. "Did François say anything else?"
Quentin nodded. "He said the Navy caught them off the coast of Oman after they tried to hijack an oil tanker. They've been in the brig until now."
"François seems to know everything that happens in this place," Daniel said.
Quentin smirked. "The guy's got more friends than marbles in his head."
Daniel laughed out loud, thinking of the garrulous and absentminded captain of the catamaran La Boussole anchored nearby. Inside, however, he felt a vague disquiet. The number of pirate attacks had dropped off substantially in the past year, thanks to patrols by international naval forces and armed security teams on merchant ships. But the pirates were still a threat from Egypt to India to Madagascar, a vast area of ocean that included the Seychelles. Since August, he had been monitoring reports from maritime organizations in London and Dubai to see whether the end of the Southwest Monsoon — a period of high winds and heavy seas around the Horn of Africa — would trigger a fresh wave of hijacks, as it had in years past. But for two months, the pirates had been largely quiet, their attacks infrequent and distant. Looking at the Gettysburg, Daniel felt the weight of his responsibility. Quentin's life was in his hands. No matter what it took, he would bring his son home.
"Something wrong, Dad?" his son asked, examining him carefully.
"It's nothing," Daniel demurred. "Are we set for supplies?"
Quentin nodded. "I went through it all yesterday."
"How about a system check?"
"I did a full workup. Engine, generator, instruments, radio, everything's good to go."
"And our course?"
"I plotted it twice. Outside the harbor, we take the channel south, avoiding the shoals near Isle Anonyme and the Isle of Rats. After the airport, we turn south and follow the coast of Mahé to Point du Sud. Once we're clear of land, we sail almost due south for a thousand miles to Réunion."
Daniel smiled. "Well done, Captain Jack. There's just one thing you forgot."
"What?" Quentin looked puzzled.
"Breakfast. It's your turn. I'd like an omelet and some fresh-squeezed papaya juice when I get back from the harbormaster."
"I was actually thinking of Spam," Quentin deadpanned, "and some of that Vegemite Ariadne's mom left with us. I remember how much you loved it." He laughed when his father threw his pen at him, and then disappeared into the cabin below.
"Make it quick," Daniel called after him, taking the letter and postcard in hand. "Anchors aweigh at eight."
* * *
It's called crossing the bar, when a ship leaves the harbor and puts out to sea. For Daniel, the feeling it evoked was the same in all latitudes — an epinephrine shot of intoxication and danger. The blue horizon beckoned like the sea stories his father had read to him when he was a boy. Voyaging under sail was an adventure unlike any other, the ultimate test of courage and will. The risks were enormous, but the rewards were greater still.
He stood in the cockpit of the Renaissance, feet wide apart, one hand on the helm, as the forty-six-foot yacht glided effortlessly through the cobalt waves, bow pointed just south of east, toward the open sea. The custom-built sailboat was lithe and graceful in the water, with the high mast and spare rigging of a sloop and the bulb keel of a racing craft. Manufactured in Sweden to the exacting specifications of her original owner — a surgeon from Maine — she was the most pleasant boat Daniel had ever sailed. She had also proven herself to be exceedingly durable, surviving two knockdowns in a Force 10 storm off the coast of New Zealand with only minor leaks and a few tears in the mainsail, and shrugging off a lightning strike in the Strait of Malacca that might have split the mast of a lesser boat.
Daniel watched as Quentin worked the main sheets and let the boom out to port, allowing the mainsail and gennaker — a headsail much larger than a jib — to drive the Renaissance forward on a leisurely four-knot run. The winds off Mahé were as fair as predicted, which surprised Daniel. In the Seychelles, November was a month of transition between the dominant monsoons, which meant that anything was possible, including a perfect calm. Two days ago, Daniel had topped off the fuel tanks, expecting to motor-sail all the way to Réunion. Now, however, he powered down the engine and enjoyed the gentle swish of the wake dovetailing behind him.
"Motor's off," he called to Quentin as his son spider-walked to the foredeck, the strains of Bob Marley's "Get Up, Stand Up" wafting out of the cabin below.
Quentin gave him a thumbs-up sign and sat down beside the bow rail, his long hair flowing out behind him. Seeing his son so at peace with the world brought Daniel a joy he could scarcely describe. It was as if Quentin had been sent back into the womb and reborn. After three quarters of a year at sea and twenty countries sprinkled like fairy dust around the equatorial belt of the earth, the years of parental anguish he and Vanessa had suffered almost seemed like someone else's history.
Quentin had been a challenge from birth. As a newborn, he had squalled while other children cooed. As a child, he had made impossible demands and thrown tantrums when they weren't met. In adolescence, his moodiness had grown into low-grade misanthropy. He was extremely bright — his IQ was in the genius range — but he had treated people like irritants. After years of struggling, Daniel and Vanessa had sought professional help, but the therapy and medication had only confused him further. He was highly sensitive and emotionally immature, the psychologists said, but he was too functional to be autistic, too socially capable to have Asperger's, and too stable to be bipolar. His agitation wasn't mania, just intense frustration with a world that never met his expectations. He was, in short, undiagnosable, which left everyone around him floundering.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Tears of Dark Water by Corban Addison. Copyright © 2015 Regulus Books, LLC.. Excerpted by permission of Thomas Nelson.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
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