The Stowaway by Robert Hough

• Vancouver Public Library, Canada
  

Publisher of Nominated Edition
Random House Canada
ISBN 0679311467

With the suspense of a thriller and the moral depth of a Joseph Conrad classic, The Stowaway is an adventure story of the highest calibre and a riveting tale of good and evil, all the more moving because it is based on actual events.

When two Romanian stowaways show themselves on the container ship Maersk Dubai one day into its passage across the Atlantic Ocean, bosun Rodolfo Miguel escorts them to his captain, assuming they'll be fed and put to work. To his horror, and that of the rest of the crew, the officers order the men to be put onto a flimsy raft, which, in an instant, is sucked under the frigid, unforgiving water.

Over the next few weeks, the crew is divided between those loyal to the officers and those who cannot accept what they have seen. When on a later voyage a third stowaway is found, and then another, they're forced to come to terms with the earlier murders and, at the risk of their own lives, act for good or evil. Intercut with these events is the story of the desperate stowaways, forced to flee their impoverished country in search of a better life.

The powerful resolution of these two narratives, of the stowaways and the crew, makes for a tense and heart-pounding tale of murder, fear, and courage on the high seas.

Robert Hough, whose first novel, The Final Confession of Mabel Stark, was shortlisted for major prizes in the UK and Canada and has been published or scheduled for publication in a dozen countries, lives in Toronto with his wife and two daughters.