Brothers by Kirk Weddell - Book Tour
Brothers by Kirk Weddell
Summary:
Owen Kerrigan – the cantankerous lighthouse keeper of a remote Irish island has been estranged from his only brother Patrick for most of his adult life. His only solace has come from immersing himself in the legend of a long lost treasure belonging to the wreck of a Spanish Armada galleon that is rumored to be hidden beneath his light.
But after tunneling in vain for years, Owen is issued with a sudden eviction notice. In desperation, with only days left to find the gold, Owen begrudgingly asks his brother for help. Hoping it may help to rebuild their relationship after more than thirty years of silence, Patrick reluctantly agrees.
As they attempt to unearth the fortune, Owen becomes increasingly drawn to Ellen, an enchanting descendant of the Pirate Queen – Grace O’Malley, who ruled the island at the time of the Armada.
As Owen’s imminent eviction looms, they race to solve the riddles ingrained in the ancient folklore of the island
and realize that Ellen may unwittingly hold a vital clue to finding the treasure. But the rift which kept the brothers apart for so long threatens to thwart both Patrick’s hopes of reconciliation and Owen’s dream of finding the fabled hoard.
Information about the Book
Title: Brothers
Author: Kirk Weddell
Release Date: 26th November 2019
Genre: Literary Fiction
Page Count: 332
Publisher: Clink Street Publishing
PROLOGUE
Don Pedro de Mendoza, the war-weary Captain
of El Gran Grin, roared out a loud, crude sailor’s oath when the deck dropped
from under his feet and slapped the lid from his hand. The heavy laden chest
slid, leaving more furrows in the already torn plank floor of his quarters. The
twenty-eight-gun galleon tossed him off his feet, and he ended up half sitting,
half lying, on his sea and rain-soaked bunk.
The chest slammed into the wall, rattling a lantern that had
long-since blown out. Don Pedro gritted his teeth and sucked in a hissing
breath. His entire body tensed—then the ship lurched again, forward this time.
Don Pedro took as deep a breath as he could, sucking in enough rain and salt
spray to make him choke. He pushed himself off his bunk and, with the practiced
gait of a veteran seaman, danced his way across his cabin to the chest, which
obliged by sliding neatly toward him.
The lid had slammed
closed, and Don Pedro checked one set of iron hinges with his bruised,
almost-numb right hand and the other with a quick glance. If they bent any
more, locking it would be a waste of time.
“¡Capitán!” a man called from the doorway—Don Pedro hadn’t heard the door open,
or at least hadn’t been able to pick that sound out from the racket of his ship
being ripped to splinters on the jagged rocks.
“¡Fuera!” Don Pedro roared back, pressing down with all his considerable
weight on the lid of the chest. He blinked up at the seaman who stared back at
him, eyes wide, blood pouring from under his hairline to mix with the rain and
paint his face a livid orange in the flickering illumination of the nearly
constant lightning.
“¡Las
rocas!” the sailor shrieked back.
Don Pedro lunged at him, riding the heave of the deck under his feet
to crash hard into the man. He took up the sailor’s torn and drenched tunic in
his fists and bellowed into his face, “¡Vete,
perro estúpido!”
He pushed the sailor back out of the door. For a moment Don Pedro
thought the sailor had slapped him across the face, but then his mouth filled
with a rain-drenched cloth. He grabbed at it as he half-fell, half-stepped back
into his cabin. The door slammed in front of him, striking the toe of his thick
leather boot and sending a knife of pain up his leg. He swore again and tumbled
back, and the lightning illuminated the cloth—a tattered quarter of the pennant
of the Squadron of Biscay.
Tossing the flag aside, he fell to his knees and cast out on both
sides for anything to grab onto. The ship lurched again, and he huffed out a
breath but managed to stay on his knees at least. Lightning flashed bright and
close, and he could finally see the ruin his cabin had become—heirlooms lost,
charts soaked and torn, glass and splintered wood everywhere. The cabin leaned
hard to the port side. Thunder crashed above him, so loud his ears began to
ring.
The chest slid past him, following the thunder with the grinding
sound of its iron bindings once again tearing through the decking. The chest
caught something Don Pedro couldn’t see, and then it tumbled over.
“¡No!” he shouted, but the chest tipped to one side, then plowed the rest
of the way into the wall.
Lightning flashed again, revealing the blazing reflection of a
mountain of gold coins—a king’s ransom, a treasure no man could ever turn his
back on, a fortune worth a hundred galleons of Spain—all to pay for safe
passage home in case of capture. Ransom money for a ship and crew not yet held
hostage. It was more gold than Don Pedro had ever dreamed existed in any one
place, let alone that he’d ever be trusted with its safe passage.
Safe passage …
Don Pedro surged to his feet and took two long steps, then fell onto
the chest. The ship rocked under him again and there came a splintering
crash—wood ripping itself apart. “El
mástil,” he whispered to himself. He couldn’t hear the words over the sound
of the mast coming away, but the feel of the words on his lips made his flesh
crawl. “Dios,” he cried, “¡Dios me ayude!”
And he pushed the lid closed. A few of the coins slid away as the
ship rocked again, not coming back to center but listing ever more to port with
each deafening crash. The gale whistled, so he couldn’t hear the coins bounce
away, couldn’t hear the sound of the lid finally coming closed. He’d saved most
of them—lost only a few.
And
how many men? he thought.
Don Pedro shook that thought out of his head, spray whipping from
his dense gray beard. He caught sight of himself in the mirror his wife had
given him— just a glimpse as it rolled past to shatter against the wall. He
looked older—older even than he felt. The lines in his face were deep, the bags
under his eyes deeper still.
Holding the lid closed with his whole body weight, Don Pedro tore
the ornate gold key from the chain around his neck. Holding tight to the bow,
beautifully, lovingly shaped into a crown-and-anchor. He made three attempts to
stab it into the keyhole of the big black iron lock while his ship broke apart.
He could hear it being torn to shreds, and he screamed in harmony with it.
The deck dropped from under him, and the chest slid away. Don Pedro
turned the key to lock the chest, then yanked it from the hole as he fell back
and his head slammed against … something. His bunk? The ship listed harder to
port. He held on to the side of his bunk with his left hand to keep from
sliding. The portside bulkhead came away then, revealing the storm-tossed sea
only a few feet beneath him.
Lightning arced across the sky, and he could see land.
“Dios me ayude,” he said, squinting into the rain, his words drowned out by the roar
of thunder.
He put the heavy gold key to his lips and kissed it, and the deck
fell out from under him. The cold sea surged in, and to Don Pedro de Mendoza it
felt as though the whole of the ocean had fallen atop him. He grabbed for
something, anything to keep him from the water and the rocks. His fingers found
cold steel—he couldn’t see what it was—but before he could register that
perhaps he’d saved himself, whatever he held came free of whatever held it and
he was falling. The air was driven from his lungs, and he closed his eyes so he
couldn’t see himself taken from his ship, from his command, from his treasure,
to die on the cruel rocks of a foreign shore.
Author Information
Kirk Weddell is an award-winning screenwriter and filmmaker; Brothers is his first novel and is based on his earlier Writers Store Grand Prize winning screenplay. After graduating with a degree in neuroscience, Weddell moved into writing; his science fiction screenplay Alone was shortlisted for the prestigious Oscar Academy Nicholl Fellowship in 2016 and is entering production next year, and his short film Dutch Bird won numerous awards at International Film Festivals. Weddell lives in Wimbledon, South London.
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