The Keeper’s Son

Homer Hickam has made a career of writing about small towns, especially the small town of Coalwood, West Virginia. His memoirs Rocket Boys (aka October Sky), The Coalwood Way, and Sky of Stone were heart-tugging, and dramatic stories of growing up in a small 1950’s coal camp deep in the heart of Appalachia. Now, with his latest novel, Homer is once more writing about a small town but one set on the lonely island of Killakeet “south of Hatteras, north of Lookout,” a place of “fishermen, clam-stompers, oyster-rakers, Coastguardsmen, and lighthouse keepers” along the legendary Outer Banks of North Carolina. The Keeper’s Son, Homer’s first of a planned trilogy of novels about a Coast Guard captain named Josh Thurlow and his family during the years of World War II, is a book with lovable and believable characters, a great page-turning plot, and a romantic, sweeping setting like none other. For what could be more romantic and dramatic than the vast and glorious sweep of sandy isles studded with lighthouses known as the Outer Banks? This is the area also known by mariners as the Graveyard of the Atlantic and for good reason. For centuries, the deadly shoals and awful winds and storms of this place have sent thousands of ships to brutal deaths beneath its turbulent seas. Still, as dangerous as it is, the Outer Banks is a place of great beauty. As Homer describes it in The Keeper’s Son, it is a place “where the water was blue and deep, and the tropical wind whistled free and clear, and the big fish danced their eternal dance of life and death.”

And it is that eternal dance that Homer captures so well in his new novel. Josh Thurlow is the son of the lighthouse keeper of Killakeet Island, but he isn’t the only keeper’s son. The novel begins with the heart-wrenching loss at sea of Jacob, Josh’s baby brother, a loss that was Josh’s fault but cannot be completely explained and threatens to wrench apart the Thurlow family. Years later, after a self-imposed exile, Josh returns to Killakeet as the captain of a small Coast Guard patrol boat assigned to patrol the waters off the island. Though he has been forgiven by Keeper Jack, his father, he has not forgiven himself and Josh still searches against impossible odds for his missing brother. Then Dosie Crossan, a spirited young woman in search of herself, arrives on Killakeet to complicate Josh’s life. When all the ladies of Killakeet start working to get Dosie and Josh married, it’s almost a relief for Josh when the war begins and he must contend with German U-boats that arrive just offshore and start sinking the tankers and freighters he is charged to protect.

The Keeper’s Son has another perspective and that is from the point of view of the German submariners, especially Captain Otto Krebs, an orphan who has grown up to become Germany most famous U-boat ace. Krebs and his crew have come to Killakeet with a mission to sink ships but soon discover that they are caught up in a odious plan to commit mass murder. Josh and Krebs, bitter enemies, must learn to trust one another to head off disaster. Gradually, Josh also comes to realize that that perhaps Krebs may have unwittingly brought with him the key to the mystery of the loss of little Jacob.

“I write all my books for the primary purpose of entertaining my readers,” Homer says, “but I also want them to learn something, too. With The Keeper’s Son, besides working very hard to write a page-turner, I wanted to bring back to life a time when our country was under attack by outside and nearly incomprehensible forces, very much as we are today. Not too many people know it but there was a huge and terribly bloody battle along the eastern shore of the United States in 1942. Over 400 of our ships were sunk by U-boats and there were also landings made up and down the coast. When I researched my first book, Torpedo Junction, a history of that battle, I kept hearing from folks who lived on one or the other islands of the Outer Banks during that era. They told me stories of Germans landing on the islands with mayhem in mind. According to these stories, the island people fought back and drove them off. Although I could never document it, there was a ring of truth to the stories. The people of the Outer Banks, owing to their natural isolation, have a history of taking their affairs into their own hands, including the defense of their islands.”

But why does a popular author known mostly for writing memoirs turn to the writing of fiction? Homer answers that question this way: “I savor the flexibility in fiction to create colorful, sometimes larger-than-life characters who will still ring true and fascinate my readers. It’s always been my belief that it isn’t plot or setting that makes for the good story, but people, and I think my readers are going to enjoy reading about the people of Killakeet Island, not to mention the marauding U-boaters. I also think that they’re going to love the romantic setting of this book and it’s got a heckuva plot, too!”