The Prodigal

“Stirring, romantic, and evocative of the sea’s magic.” —Kirkus Reviews

This sweeping allegorical tale begins with the escape of a Gypsy princess and her young lover from her father’s camp in 1851, recalling the flight of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. The boy steals Prodigal, a sailing ship blessed with unnatural speed, and the lovers escape to sea, leaving the father to grieve for the loss and pine for the return of his child. More than 150 years later on Ocracoke Island we meet Aidan Sharpe, an aging lawyer, as he rises from the sand of a remote beach after a lost weekend. While struggling to rebuild his life in this lonely outpost of the Outer Banks, Aidan is caught up in a two-thousand-year-old mystery that unfolds with the sudden reappearance of Prodigal off the coast, adrift and unmanned. Its discovery will lead Aidan and those close to him into the deep, in a race between time and eternity.

“[A]n intriguing, well-plotted, and multilayered novel. The supernatural elements—a religious relic, a gypsy woman out of legend—are thougtfully handled. Hurley writes beautifully, especially when depicting island and nautical life.” —Kirkus Reviews