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Francis Odin Conklin A Modern Odyssey
Paperback
General FictionHistorical Fiction
Publisher: Richard Smith
Published: Jul 27 2026
Pages: 80
Weight: 0.23
Height: 0.19 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English
Most men who live by the sea die there one way or another.
Francis Odin Conklin was born in the fog-choked docks of Liverpool in 1916. Motherless at ten, fatherless always, he stows away on a freighter at twelve and never truly returns. The Atlantic becomes his only home-until the war turns it into a graveyard.
As a merchant sailor in the Battle of the Atlantic, Frank survives two sinkings, watches friends burn and freeze, and learns the cruel arithmetic of convoy warfare: keep formation, do not stop, and leave the dying behind. When the second ship goes down near the Texas coast, he washes ashore in Galveston and makes a quiet decision that will shape the rest of his life.
What follows is not a story of glory, but of the long, hard work of becoming ordinary. Of engines that can be fixed. Of a woman patient enough to wait for a man who has spent his life leaving. Of a small repair shop in South Dallas and the slow discovery that survival and living are not the same thing.
Spanning eight decades and two continents, Francis Odin Conklin: A Modern Odyssey is a sweeping yet intimate novel about the sea, war, memory, and the quiet courage it takes to finally come home.
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