Closer by Sea

Praise for PERRY CHAFE and CLOSER BY SEA“Perry Chafe’s Closer by Sea, is a coming-of-age story full of friendship, love of the ocean, cod tongues, bullies, boyhood crushes, mysteries, and monstrously beautiful icebergs—fast one-liners and sharp wit. Chafe writes about what it means to belong and to be cast out. About the end of a kind of life in outport Newfoundland and the end of childhood. About moving on. All of this with a pacing that clips along at a thousand knots a minute. Chafe shows how ninety percent of a human being is below the surface, and how we have to dive deep to know each other. These characters are rich, multifaceted, and unforgettable. And this novel has all the makings of a beloved, classic bildungsroman, as tender as tender can be.”LISA MOORE, bestselling author of Caught and This Is How We Love“Chafe’s teen mystery is salt-stained Newfoundland mixed with West Irish legend and the classic adventure of Goonies and Stand by Me. Equal parts haunting, heartbreaking, and hilarious the reader is drawn into the tragic 1990s Grand Banks cod decline, foreboding paternal absence, and growing up an uncertain Islander amid great social change. Sure to be loved on our shores and beyond.”JESSE THISTLE, #1 bestselling author of From the Ashes“Tiny, isolated fishing towns are postcard cute and perfectly wholesome. Until they are not. Where there’s the charm of kids cutting cod tongues, there’s also the tragedy of Thank you for downloading this Simon & Schuster ebook.Join our mailing list to get updates on new releases, deals, recommended reads, and more from Simon & Schuster.CLICK HERE TO SIGN UPAlready a subscriber? Provide your email again so we can register this ebook and send you more of what you like to read. You will continue to receive exclusive offers in your inbox. For my sister, Diane Kieley, who was with me in spirit on this journey PROLOGUEPeople really can vanish without a trace. I was only nine years old when I learned that my father, Luke Jacobs, would never be coming home again. It was the summer of 1988. My uncle found his thirty-foot trap skiff drifting a couple of miles out from Perigo Island—our island—just off the northeast coast of Newfoundland. He was not on board.Many believed that my father disappeared on a fishing ground known as the Saddle, where the depth of the ocean would suddenly plummet hundreds of feet. It was a tricky fishing berth to navigate. Nestled between two large groupings of rocks, it was an area notorious for rogue waves, the result of ocean swell interacting with fast-moving currents. Such waves had been known to sink ships.A search was conducted by the coast guard with just about every single boat on the island joining in to help, but after two days, it was called off. Forty-eight hours of searching for a life. His