KIRKUS REVIEW
Boy meets boat; boy meets girl; boy meets another girl; boy meets cocaine; boy loses boat—it’s complicated…
Matt Younger is the kind of guy trouble seeks out, owing mainly to his unusual and adventurous choices. After a 13-year hiatus from home, he’s come back in a confessional mode. He wants to tell his dying father Skip about his adventures during this time, but also about his complicity in the drowning of older brother Hale, a golden boy, star athlete and potential Olympian who had an untamed side of which their parents were ignorant. Skip is on his deathbed, and Matt takes over his mother’s duties as night nurse. The narrative alternates between Matt’s solicitude for his unforgiving (and semi-conscious) father and flashbacks to the period after he dropped out of high school in the wake of Hale’s death. Sailing Sam Wells’ 40-foot trimaran Stardust from Key West to St. Thomas, Matt gets stranded in the Turks and Caicos; he misses the Trades shift by one day, and the intractable winds are likely to keep him there for several months. About this time he encounters two characters who will irrevocably alter his life: cocaine dealer Jimmy Q and femme fatale Jenny. Jimmy Q persuades Matt to do an “easy” cocaine pickup, but Matt plans a complicated and dangerous hat trick to double-cross Jimmy Q, steal the cocaine and also steal Sam’s boat. To muddle things still further, Matt then meets and falls in love with Rosario, who has an unknown agenda of her own. Metaphorically caught between two women, he winds up getting literally caught by a corrupt comandante in the Dominican Republic.
White rings some compelling changes in a convoluted tale that leads to Matt’s redemption.