The Lady Lu

When a man too good to live meets a man too evil to die, all Tate’s Hell breaks loose.
The story is set along the Forgotten Coast of Northwest Florida, from the snow white dunes of the beaches to the snake-infested swamps of Tate’s Hell.
Bill Steele shouldn’t have been there that night. He should have been at home, with his wife Laura and their children: Anne, who has just completed her first year of college, Robbie is a rising senior in high school, and Willa Grace, their late surprise, is a six-year-old daddy’s girl. The family’s life revolves around a boat that Bill built over the years and named for his wife. The Lady Lu is a wooden hulled cabin cruiser of classic design.
It was his luck to be there that night, fated to a bloody rendezvous with LeRoi King, an unrepentantly evil man. On the banks of a river, and in the dark of night, they lock in mortal combat over the life of an innocent. The match is a draw.
Grievously wounded, LeRoi escapes down the river, leaving Bill for dead. When he leaves the river, he enters Tate’s Hell.
Devastated by the loss of her husband, Laura struggles to rebuild her life without him. However, her children rebel when she decides they can no longer afford to keep the Lady Lu. She agrees to try a plan to save the boat by chartering it for fishing.
The only captain they can find willing to take the gamble is a luckless young roustabout named Nick Goodwin. Orphaned at an early age and raised on the water, Nick has nothing and so has nothing to lose.
Laura’s heart goes out to the wild child and Nick finds himself surrounded by the family he never had. Together, they renovate the Lady Lu into a vintage replica and begin running fishing charters in the bays and Gulf.
Lost and dying in the depths of Tate’s Hell, LeRoi is rescued by a sardonic demon named Seth. Living off the grid, between life and death and outside of time, Seth nurses LeRoi back to health before enslaving him.
LeRoi sexual perversions come back to haunt him when he is left in the care of Mata Hairy, a large woman of unclean habits. Her perverted sexual appetites overwhelm LeRoi and leave him a broken man.
LeRoi’s position sinks even lower when Seth’s dog, Jack, returns. Jack is the biggest damn dog LeRoi has ever seen and definitely dominant.
While romance blossoms between Nick and Anne, LeRoi is driven from the campfire by flaming whips. He is cast back into life and straight into the center of Tate’s Hell. Chased through the swamps by Jack, LeRoi falls off a cliff into a river, nearly drowning. He is terrified by a snake, stung by wasps, and breaks his nose in a stolen car. Doggedly, he makes his way to the coast, obsessed by the idea of stealing a boat and cutting directly across the Gulf to his home.
Anne and Nick have only just acknowledged their feelings for each other when LeRoi re-enters their lives. Mentally unhinged, he terrorizes the family and threatens Anne to force Nick into taking him home aboard the Lady Lu. On the storm-tossed Gulf, illuminated by lightning and drenched by rain, Nick matches wits and muscle with the crazed killer. With the boat burning, Anne unconscious, and Nick beaten down, there is a rip in the veil between life and death that allows spirits to cross over, before an explosion lights up the night and destroys the Lady Lu.