Survivors of the Roland

Dr. Frederick von Kammacher has lost everything. His wife is confined to an asylum. His scientific career lies in ruins after a humiliating professional scandal. His three children have been sent away to boarding school. At thirty years old, he should be rebuilding his life.

Instead, he's chasing a teenage dancer across the Atlantic.

When Frederick discovers that Ingigerd Hahlstroem and her father are boarding the steamship Roland bound for New York, he makes a desperate, impulsive decision—he will be on that ship. He tells himself it's coincidence. He tells himself he's traveling to see Niagara Falls. He tells himself the obsession will fade once he sees her again.

He's wrong about all of it.

As the Roland battles through January storms, Frederick finds himself trapped in a floating world with nowhere to run. The passengers are a strange collection of dreamers and an armless sharpshooter who dispenses cutting truths, a lovesick mail clerk who tried to end his life over a woman just like Ingigerd, immigrants fleeing poverty in the bowels of the ship, and aristocrats dancing on deck while waves crash over the railings.

And then there's Ingigerd herself—sixteen, damaged, magnetic, cruel. She draws men to her like a spider draws flies, and Frederick watches himself become one more victim even as he recognizes the trap closing around him.

On the open ocean, there's no escape from the storm outside or the one raging within.

A gripping tale of obsession, self-destruction, and the dangerous voyage between the person you were and whoever you might become.