Stranded Vessels

“Few books have I been prouder to publish, this close-to-the-bone novel by Harry Schroeder crosses generations as a son comes to terms with his father’s legacy. Not since Pat Conroy has this theme been explored so eloquently and so forcefully.”
- Shirrel Rhoades, publisher

Jack Colcroft, former Marine, former professor, former war protester, has left a declining America for a comfortably meaningless life on an island paradise, after breaking up with his musician wife, Sally, a leading protestor against the war, and falling out with his late father, a distinguished public servant who was high in the councils waging that war and was defeated by it. Jack’s best friend, Max McKenzie, plagued by his memories of combat in the Vietnam jungle, commits suicide. Stung by their deaths, Jack goes home to research their lives and their backgrounds—his father’s heritage from Colonial New England, and Max’s pioneer family’s history as citizen soldiers. Both were betrayed by the traditions of America which they and their ancestors had made, as was the country itself, which has hardly begun even now to heal the cultural divisions which that war aggravated. Late in the novel, Sally comes back to help with Jack’s investigations, and the two eventually become reconciled.

After a hitch in the Marine Corps and a Ph.D. at Yale, Harry Schroeder dropped out into the Florida Keys, where he worked as a cab driver, copy editor, drug counsellor, professor, musician, and music critic.