Thin Slice of Life (ePub)

Charlie Sweetwater comes from generations of fishermen and shrimpers on the Gulf Coastal Bend of the Texas coast. It’s in his blood, but blood has turned bad and Charlie is living the vagabond’s life in Mexico. Upon receiving a mysterious and enticing message from his brother Johnny, however, Charlie points his pickup towards Texas and home. But Johnny is a no-show when Charlie arrives at his hometown of Fulton. The Coast Guard has discovered Johnny’s shrimp boat drifting abandoned in the Gulf. Is it “death by misadventure” as the authorities presume, or something more sinister? What had Johnny been trying to communicate to his estranged brother?Meanwhile, Fulton Harbor, where Charlie’s family has docked their shrimp boats for generations, has changed—and not for the better. Hard-working newly-arrived Vietnamese immigrant fishermen are under the thumb of Col. Nguyen Ngoc Bao, a ruthless exiled gangster who aims to recreate his Asian criminal enterprise in a New World setting.Confronting Bao and his thugs are Charlie and a mismatched group of good guys (and gals): a fast-and-loose Cajun hustler, a salty cast of “Third Coast” barroom regulars, a handful of courageous Vietnamese émigrés, a menacing ex-convict, and a misplaced Texas Ranger who discovers a slice of the Lone Star State that the cowboy movies of his boyhood never prepared him for.Along the way, Charlie finds himself falling for his brother’s girlfriend, whose zealous desire to see justice served tests his own limits for loyalty and commitment. Unlikely heroes arise from improbable circumstances, and the denizens of the small seaside community find their fortunes and fates ebbing and flowing like the tidal flux of the ocean itself.Suddenly, the Sweetwaters’ thin slice of life on the Texas Gulf Coast has never seemed so tenuous, or so perilous.