The Wreck

**"Landon Beach's debut novel The Wreck is a modern-day Treasure Island that keeps the reader turning pages."**

– **Steve Alten** , NY Times the bad guys are really bad and the good guys are really great. The Michigan summer cottage experience is perfectly captured, and then enhanced by a gripping adventure aboard boats, on shore, and best of all, underwater. Because the tension builds unbearably, the reader will not be able to turn away from the book and should take care when reading on the beach because of the danger of forgetting to re-apply sunscreen! We’re looking forward to more terrific Landon Beach Great Lakes novels!”

– **Cris Kohl** and **Joan Forsberg** , well-known maritime historians, founders of Seawolf Communications, Inc., and authors of numerous diving and shipwreck books including The Wreck of the Griffon: The Greatest Mystery of the Great Lakes

“At the heart of this entertaining and suspenseful thriller is one of Michigan’s great historical mysteries that has gone unanswered for more than three hundred years. The author has done his research and cleverly woven that mystery and the solving of it as the engine that drives this novel of adventure.

School teacher Nate Martin and his wife Brooke spend their summers in an old beach house on the northern coast of Lake Huron that once belonged to his parents. Michigan’s Sunrise Coast has traditionally been ignored by the wealthy but as available lakeshore property on the Lake Michigan side of the lower peninsula has become harder to find, the well-to-do discovered Lake Huron and its beautiful beaches. The coast the wealthy once looked down their noses at is presently becoming gentrified. This is the first novel or piece of non-fiction that I’ve read that describes the ever increasing shift from small, aging cottages to million dollar summer homes along northern US-23. The author is very good at capturing the feel, character, and charm of Up North small towns and cottage life on the big water.

On one of Nate’s morning strolls, he finds a peculiar and very out-of-place object on the beach. In trying to discover what the object is, where it could have come from, and if it is of any value he is told to look up Hutch, a Coast Guard retiree and widower, who lives up the coast from Nate and Brooke. The man is a bit of a curmudgeon, a jack of all trades has an interest in maritime history, and is estranged from his only daughter.

Nate’s discovery is of great interest to Hutch. The two men slowly become friends as they work to identify and research the object’s history and the adventure it soon leads them on. The author does a great job of meticulously establishing a fictional resolution of Michigan’s 300-year-old mystery and describing the adventure that ensues. As news of what Nate might have found spreads it attacks the attention of violent men in search of some quick money. The main characters are fully drawn and several minor plot threads give them added dimension. The well thought out lead up to the climax burns like a slow fuse….

Landon Beach admits to wanting to entertain the reader which he does admirably in this his first novel. As an added bonus the reader is introduced to a very good description of the circumstances and the few basic facts surrounding one of the state’s great mysteries.”

\- **Tom Powers** from Michigan in Books Blog