“A riveting tale that celebrates the tenacity of the human spirit. Eager to escape his past, a widower embarks on a voyage to discover sunken treasure in this novelette of adventure and survival set in the 19th century.” -Kirkus Reviews
The Coward of Grimsby
In the final years of the Victorian era, a French fisherman and an English aristocrat team up on a harrowing adventure that brings forth an epic battle of greed, survival, and redemption.
In the port city of Grimsby, England, a down on his luck French fisherman named Georges DuFort meets Cornelius Braddock, a widowed aristocrat searching for a reason to live. Georges tells him the tale of a long-lost ship loaded with Spanish gold that disappeared off the African coast while on the run from the armies of Napoleon Bonaparte. After Georges shares his family’s secret—the location of the lost treasure—the two men form a quick bond and begin to plan for the voyage of a lifetime. Things then turn for the worse when Georges mysteriously disappears on the eve of the journey, forcing Braddock to embark on the adventure without him.
Many months later and thought to be lost at sea, Braddock washes up on the shores of a small French village telling a tragic tale of bloodlust and mutiny. Since he returns home without the ship or its crew, he is thrown into prison and blamed for their disappearance. With no evidence of what really happened, Braddock is labeled a coward and a criminal for saving only himself and abandoning his crew to the harsh fate of the ocean.
Now, only Georges may hold the key to what truly happened on that fateful voyage and if the stories of the Spanish treasure were true after all. Will he find redemption for Braddock, or will the truth remain buried at sea? Find out in this gripping tale of a long-lost treasure and the lives it forever changed.
“A stunning and tightly told work of historical fiction, The Coward of Grimsby by Eric Ryan is a swashbuckling, time-jumping story that you won’t want to put down til it’s over. From sunken Spanish warships and brutal mutinies to tragedies of the soul and the undeniable charm of a bygone era, this novelette twists readers’ expectations through a cleverly deconstructed plot that achieves a delightful level of suspense. Tied together with subtle themes and edited to near perfection, this satisfying read may require some suspension of disbelief, but it is a pleasure to get lost in Ryan’s original tale.” -Self-Publishing Review
About the Author
Eric Daniel Ryan and his family live north of Boston in the shadows of Old Salem Village, the Rebecca Nurse Homestead, and Lovecraft’s Arkham Asylum. After studying screenwriting and film production at the School of Visual Arts, he served three years in the US Army and is a combat veteran of the war in Iraq. In 2005 Eric became a Boston Firefighter and, in 2017, opened a business selling and collecting rare, original movie posters. Each night, after tucking the little ones into bed, he settles down in his two-hundred-year-old home to finish his first novel. His short story, “The Orchid,” was previously published in the anthology “Portraits of the Pen” by City Limits Publishing.
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