In the spring of 1970, nineteen-year-old Ted McHugh signs onto a Great Lakes ore freighter, hoping distance and hard work will steady a life already drifting off course. The ship becomes its own floating world--grueling labor, strict routines, and the nightly poker games where his cabinmate Mike, a few years older and far wiser, wins with uncanny consistency.
Ted's assumptions are challenged when he befriends Lacy, the ship's galley steward and a transvestite whose intelligence, kindness, and quiet courage reshape Ted's understanding of the people around him. Lacy becomes one of the few he can trust.
But the season turns dark when Mike vanishes during his midnight watch on Lake Superior. Suicide or murder--no one knows. Before his disappearance, Mike revealed where he hid his poker winnings and made Ted promise to deliver the money to his mother if anything happened. Now Ted faces a wrenching choice: honor his promise or turn the money over to the captain, knowing Mike's warning--"Don't trust anyone"--may be the only truth he has left.
When tensions aboard the ship escalate and Ted becomes a target, it is Lacy who risks everything to help him escape the freighter in Silver Bay, saving his life and sending him home to Pine Lake, Indiana.
But the danger follows him. Jubal--the unstable oiler who lost heavily to Mike and blames Ted for it--quits his job, steals a car, and drives across the Midwest with a shotgun and a grudge. One night, with the phone lines cut and the power dead, the McHugh home becomes a battleground. Ted, his father Sean, and his mother Maeve are thrust into a desperate fight for survival as Jubal forces his way inside.
Great Lakes is a coming-of-age story forged in steel, weather, loyalty, and the thin line between fear and courage.
In the spring of 1970, nineteen-year-old Ted McHugh signs onto a Great Lakes ore freighter, hoping distance and hard work will steady a life already drifting off course. The ship becomes its own floating world--grueling labor, strict routines, and the nightly poker games where his cabinmate Mike, a few years older and far wiser, wins with uncanny consistency.
Ted's assumptions are challenged when he befriends Lacy, the ship's galley steward and a transvestite whose intelligence, kindness, and quiet courage reshape Ted's understanding of the people around him. Lacy becomes one of the few he can trust.
But the season turns dark when Mike vanishes during his midnight watch on Lake Superior. Suicide or murder--no one knows. Before his disappearance, Mike revealed where he hid his poker winnings and made Ted promise to deliver the money to his mother if anything happened. Now Ted faces a wrenching choice: honor his promise or turn the money over to the captain, knowing Mike's warning--"Don't trust anyone"--may be the only truth he has left.
When tensions aboard the ship escalate and Ted becomes a target, it is Lacy who risks everything to help him escape the freighter in Silver Bay, saving his life and sending him home to Pine Lake, Indiana.
But the danger follows him. Jubal--the unstable oiler who lost heavily to Mike and blames Ted for it--quits his job, steals a car, and drives across the Midwest with a shotgun and a grudge. One night, with the phone lines cut and the power dead, the McHugh home becomes a battleground. Ted, his father Sean, and his mother Maeve are thrust into a desperate fight for survival as Jubal forces his way inside.
Great Lakes is a coming-of-age story forged in steel, weather, loyalty, and the thin line between fear and courage.
In the spring of 1970, nineteen-year-old Ted McHugh signs onto a Great Lakes ore freighter, hoping distance and hard work will steady a life already drifting off course. The ship becomes its own floating world--grueling labor, strict routines, and the nightly poker games where his cabinmate Mike, a few years older and far wiser, wins with uncanny consistency.
Ted's assumptions are challenged when he befriends Lacy, the ship's galley steward and a