Untamed Coast
A Novel
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected Sep 1, 2026
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
A late-night mayday call drives a grieving man to embark on an unexpected journey along the wild Alaskan coast, unraveling a decades-old mystery of stolen gold, missing women, and murder in this atmospheric and propulsive debut novel, perfect for fans of William Kent Krueger and Peter Heller.
After the loss of his wife, Marconi Franco is content drifting alone on his boat through the isolated waters of Southeast Alaska with no real destination in mind. But when a mysterious distress signal cuts through the static on his radio one sleepless night, Marco feels an overwhelming pull to help the woman whose plea he heard—a pull he can't explain or ignore.
His search for the missing woman draws him to Radioville, an abandoned 1930s communication outpost now decaying on an uninhabited island off the coast of Alaska. There, Marco begins uncovering fragments of a story long forgotten: a Depression-era theft, a shattered marriage, and a disturbing pattern of disappearances. As he sifts through the past, his own grief starts to mirror the tragedies that echo across decades, and his search draws the attention of someone determined to keep the truth buried.
Told across three evocative timelines—a radio operator in 1938 collecting more than just telegrams, a young woman in the 1980s fighting to survive her abusive husband, and Marco in the present day searching for a voice in the static—Untamed Coast is a story of fierce determination, missed signals, loneliness and connection, and the unseen ripples that reverberate across generations, standing the test of time and the tides.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Morris mines the beauty and danger of the Alaskan wilderness for his charming if choppy debut. Marconi Franco is coping with the grief of losing his wife by fulfilling their shared dream of boating through southeast Alaska. When he hears a woman's distress call on his radio one night, followed by a man's voice telling him to change the channel, Marco tries to find the source of the signal. His search takes him to Radioville, a remote island that relayed communications from the mainland to a nearby mine in the 1930s. There, Marconi finds an antique radio filled with hidden gold. While he pokes around the island and tries to figure out whom the radio belongs to, somebody sabotages Marconi's boat, nearly stranding him—and suggesting he might be on to something. Other narrative threads detail a heist off the coast of Alaska in 1938 and a woman's escape from an abusive marriage in the 1980s. Gradually, Morris ties both threads back to Marconi's search. Short chapters and a plethora of characters stall momentum in the novel's first half, but Morris picks up the pace just in time to deliver a satisfying finale. The result is a heartwarming, swashbuckling regional mystery that should satisfy fans of Paul Doiron.
