What Leads People to Risk their Lives for Strangers?
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by: Jon Nappa
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Word Count: 512
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 “Army of Volunteers” 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 (www.jonnappaprojects.com) has now documented both hardships and heroics in his new book, “Storm Warriors” (publisher: NAVPRESS)
From the opening chapter of “Storm Warriors” 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 “The Goodwin Sands,” a real menace off the coast of Dover that has taken countless ships over the centuries. Nappa’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 – 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 “Storm Warriors” – 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 “Storm Warriors” 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. Lukin’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.
Nappa’s imagination was fired by the descriptions of this frequent devastation, causing him to blend Gilmore’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, Nappa’s tribute to heroes of the sea involves you in the action and the characters, keeps your interest, and is (as Gilmore says) “A tale which may well stir…stout hearts to brave and magnificent deeds.”
About the Author
Jon Nappa has worked in the television and motion picture industry for over 20 years and is the official writer of the Debbie Reynolds Hollywood Motion Picture History Museum. He has co-created, wrote and directed an award winning television series, and is the author of books for children and adults. It was his own sea adventure, sailing in a Square-Rigger from New York to Denmark that attracted him to nautical tales. Nappa has visited Ramsgate, seeing for himself the shifting Goodwin Sands that continue to entrap passing ships despite GPS navigation. Nappa lives with his wife and four children in North Carolina.(www.jonnappaprojects.com)
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