The Oceans and the Stars

by Mark Helprin

A Navy captain near the end of a decorated career, Stephen Rensselaer is disciplined, intelligent, and determined to always do what’s right. In defending the development of a new variant of warship, he makes an enemy of the president of the United States, who assigns him to command the doomed line’s only prototype––Athena, Patrol Coastal 15––with the intent to humiliate a man who should have been an admiral.

Rather than resign, Rensselaer takes the new assignment in stride, and while supervising Athena’s fitting out in New Orleans, encounters a brilliant lawyer, Katy Farrar, with whom he falls in last-chance love. Soon thereafter, he is deployed on a mission that subjects his integrity, morality, and skill to the ultimate test, and ensures that Athena will live forever in the annals of the Navy.

As in the Odyssey, Katy is the force that keeps him alive and the beacon that lights the way home through seven battles, mutiny, and court martial. In classic literary form, an enthralling new novel that extolls the virtues of living by the laws of conscience, decency, and sacrifice, The Oceans and the Stars is nothing short of a masterpiece.