Only weeks ago, we again saw a community living on a barrier island suffer the misfortune of wind, waves and storm surge, wiping clean a portion of that narrow strip of land known as Galveston Island in Texas. The upside of this recent event is the response from a literal andldquo;Army of Volunteersandrdquo; who braved the storm to rescue those stranded, and who are now helping the homeless in the Texas heat without power, potable water or a comfortable bed. That kind of rescuing spirit is seen time and again: remember the heroes borne of the 9/11 catastrophes. Author Jon Nappa has now documented both hardships and heroics in his new book, andldquo;Storm Warriorsandrdquo; (publisher: NAVPRESS)
From the opening chapter of andldquo;Storm Warriorsandrdquo; we witness heroism in its finest sense, with the life of the hero and his family in constant jeopardy, on a small ship in the English Channel amidst a churning gale. Hidden among the pounding waves is a barrier known as andldquo;The Goodwin Sands,andrdquo; a real menace off the coast of Dover that has taken countless ships over the centuries. Nappaandrsquo;s exciting first chapter offers us pages of panic, loss and failed rescue, leaving Lionel Lukin as a survivor. Lukin, like the sandbar, is real, and his contribution to sailing ships is also real andndash; in the book he uses his experience to create a lifeboat, which will save many thousands from the fate he almost experienced in the pounding waves.
We have to coin a new term to define andldquo;Storm Warriorsandrdquo; andndash; it is a hybrid of history and historical fiction. Nappa discovered the key to this unique work while prowling through dusty rare books finding an earlier andldquo;Storm Warriorsandrdquo; written in 1875 by the Reverend John Gilmore of Ramsgate, England. In his book the Reverend described how the citizens of Ramsgate, which lies across from the Goodwin Sands, learned to take to the lifeboat created by Lukin, risking their own lives to save others from certain death. His lifeboat was not one of the little dinghies ships carry in hopes of saving those on board only to see them become splinters when encountering the Dover gales. Lukinandrsquo;s lifeboat was manned by several men and was strong enough, buoyant enough, to breast the waves, to right itself if capsized, and to bring back the rescued to shore.
Nappaandrsquo;s imagination was fired by the descriptions of this frequent devastation, causing him to blend Gilmoreandrsquo;s record with his own believable action-filled, heart-pounding story. Borrowing Gilmore and Lukin from real life, he used them as central characters in his book, surrounded by townspeople who travel from uninvolved scavengers of the shipwrecks visible from their shore, to Storm Warriors, risking their lives on the waves to save strangers. Believably written in the language of a nineteenth century English sea village, Nappaandrsquo;s tribute to heroes of the sea involves you in the action and the characters, keeps your interest, and is (as Gilmore says) andldquo;A tale which may well stirandhellip;stout hearts to brave and magnificent deeds.andrdquo;

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