Hard Aground

From James W. Hall, best-selling author of Bones of Coral, comes a haunting new novel that sizzles with greed, lust, and murder, as it brilliantly evokes the secrets, betrayals, and family legacies that can either destroy or redeem. Set in the crime-ridden waters of southern Florida, Hard Aground tells the story of Hap Tyler. A tour guide and part-time sailboard builder, Hap is a man without direction, adrift in the teeming sea of life - until his brother Daniel's brutal murder shocks him out of his inertia. Hap's quest to find Daniel's killer leads him into a Miami rife with vice and violence - and into a sexually charged affair with crusading journalist Marguerite Rawlings. Haunted by her own family skeletons and a painfully unresolved relationship with her famous senator-mother, it is Marguerite who will toss Hap the lifeline he needs, and help him come to terms with his troubled existence. Intricately interwoven into this powerful story of self-discovery and long-buried secrets - and poised in poetic counterpoint - is a wild and raucous search for sunken treasure. Here, a host of colorful characters scramble to score off a deepsea fortune buried beneath the Miami surf. The novel packs a mean, stinging wallop when these two plot lines converge and collide in a stunning, unforgettable climax. Hard Aground is a fiendishly clever invention of mythic - and murderous - proportions, as Hall ruthlessly rips away the drop cloth of civilization to lay bare the foibles and follies, amorality and avarice, hilarity and heartbreaking nobility at the sniveling, snarling, savage heart of man.