Landfall is one of those books that's hard to pin down. It's got suspense and a mystery, a love story of sorts, a sea story, and a man searching for truth.
The author, Joseph Jablonski, spent more than half his life at sea. Landfall is based on a story he heard about something that happened on another ship. Then Joe fleshed it out with a modern day story of a man trying to come to terms with his past, unearthing secrets he'd kept buried for forty years.
Landfall takes place in Portland, Oregon and along the Oregon Coast, but the story-within-the-story takes the reader back to Vietnam and the Philippines during the late 1960s. A time of chaos and upheaval. The novel is also about the toll of war on everyone who survives.
After completing his manuscript, Joe died suddenly last May. His wife and son wanted fulfill the dream he'd had of seeing it in print. Fortunately for readers, Joe left a perfectly polished, serious, riveting book.