Smith, Patrick D. The Seas that Mourn: A Novel

An autobiographical novel about fictitious World War 2 seaman Jimmy Kindall’s life at sea after abandoning his Mississippi college for the merchant marine. Though Smith’s writing is rather wooden, his descriptions of alter-ego Kindall’s hurried training at a U.S. Maritime Service Training Station in Florida is of interest, as are his depictions of North Atlantic and Murmansk Run convoys aboard the old freighter JUNIPER SPRINGS. Even sixty years after the JUNIPER SPRING’s sinking by a German U-boat, Smith remains bitter (deservedly so!) about treatment given merchant seamen during the war by civilians and armed services personnel who often didn’t believe that merchant mariners were “really” part of the Allied war effort. Indeed, the authors’ anger, documented by the many World War 2-era slights and insults endured by civilian seamen, makes The Seas That Mourn a uniquely passionate novel.