The Count of Souls

Eight days out of Santo Domingo, the Santa Aurelia holds course for Cartagena under a fair wind and a sky that should not yet trouble anyone.

Mateo Vargas, the young officer of the watch, sees what no glass and no chart will show - a swell at an odd angle, a fever in the steerage, a Spanish nobleman whose complaints rise more easily than his prayers. Below him the passengers settle their grievances; above him the August clouds gather where they should not.

Within hours the ship will be lost.

What follows on a low Caribbean cay is not adventure. It is a count: of fresh water, of able hands, of debts owed to the living and the dead. Don Álvaro de Rojas demands first claim by birth. His wife, Doña Isabel, learns what restraint can no longer reach. A friar weighs charity against arithmetic. And Mateo - too young to be in command, too old to be ignored - must decide whose souls are counted, and whose are not.

A literary historical novel of shipwreck, hierarchy, and the moral weight of survival.

The first volume of The Hardship Trilogy.