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The Ordinary Seaman

Francisco Goldman

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The Ordinary Seaman

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The Ordinary Seaman was named a Best Book of the Year by Newsday, the Los Angeles Times Book Review, the Chicago Tribune, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and Publishers Weekly. In the late 1980s, teenage Sandinista soldier and avowed communist Esteban Gaitán leaves Nicaragua to begin a new life in America. He soon arrives on a desolate Brooklyn pier with fourteen other men to form the crew of the ship Urus. Elias and Mark, the owners of the Urus, hold the men captive, forcing them to work in a vain attempt to make the rotting vessel seaworthy. Without the means to return home, Esteban remains a virtual prisoner, haunted by the loss of the woman he loved during the war. Eventually learning how to sneak off the ship, he makes nocturnal forays into Brooklyn, where he meets a Mexican immigrant named Joaquina, and begins to plot his permanent escape. Centering his novel around Esteban, but also telling the stories of his fellow landlocked sailors, Francisco Goldman explores the perils, passions, and adventures of a young Nicaraguan immigrant trapped in Brooklyn.

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Publisher
Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Year
2007
ISBN-13
9781555846404
Genre
Fiction
Topics
Immigration and displacementExploitation and captivityWar trauma and loss

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