Grady's Odyssey

Book excerpt: Grady Williams was on top of the world. Raised by middle class parents in a small town in Tennessee, he became a successful Wall Street investment banker. His picture was common, not only on the front page of the business section of the New York Times, but also on its society page. He had it all! A beautiful and talented girlfriend, a friend that was like a brother to him, and more money than he could spend in two lifetimes. When a series of tragic events occur, almost simultaneously, his life is turned upside down. Grief, loneliness, and loss cause him to lose interest in all the things that had once seemed so important to him. In search of himself, he abandons New York, money, and people he thought were his friends. The discovery of an old boat, with a suspicious past, and its restoration become his new obsession. The energy that he had once put into his business career he channels into his new love of the sea and his boat. He becomes determined to sail his little boat to whatever destinations he can dream. Little did he know that his slow and ugly boat, Slugly, would take him on an odyssey containing a drug trafficker, a shady Caribbean real estate deal and, ultimately, a string of murders. Gradys knowledge of high finance, the love of the deal and his interest in a mysterious woman he meets in the Bahamas casts him into a game where winning and losing is not measured by profit and loss, but in life and death.