About this item
Newly-promoted to Captain, Dan Lenson's first glimpse of his command is of a ship literally high and dry. The USS Savo Island, which carries a classified, never-before-deployed missile defense system, has run aground on an exposed sandbar off Naples. Captain Lenson has to relieve the ship's disgraced skipper and deploy on a secret mission--Operation Stellar Shield--which will take his ship and crew into the dangerous waters bordering the Middle East.As a climate of war builds between Israel and Iraq, with threats of nuclear and chemical weapons, Dan has to rally Savo Island's demoralized crew, confront a mysterious death on board ship, while learning to operate a complex missile system that has not been battle tested. But when the conflict reaches a climax, Dan is forced to make a decision that may cost hundreds of thousands of innocent lives--or may save them, but at the cost of his ship and his career.
About the Author
Aka D.C. Poyer. DAVID CHARLES POYER was born in DuBois, PA in 1949. He grew up in Brockway, Emlenton, and Bradford, in western Pennsylvania, and graduated from Bradford Area High School in 1967. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1971, and later received a master's degree from George Washington University. Poyer's active and reserve naval service included sea duty in the Atlantic, Mediterranean, Arctic, Caribbean, and Pacific, and shore duty at the Pentagon, Surface Warfare Development Group, Joint Forces Command, and in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. He retired in July 2001. Poyer began writing in 1976, and is the author of nearly fifty books, including THE MED, THE GULF, THE CIRCLE, THE PASSAGE, TOMAHAWK, CHINA SEA, BLACK STORM, THE COMMAND, THE THREAT, KOREA STRAIT, THE WEAPON, THE CRISIS, THE CRUISER, TIPPING POINT, HUNTER KILLER, DEEP WAR, and OVERTHROW, best-selling Navy novels; THE DEAD OF WINTER, WINTER IN THE HEART, AS THE WOLF LOVES WINTER, and THUNDER ON THE MOUNTAIN, set in the Pennsylvania hills; and HATTERAS BLUE, BAHAMAS BLUE, LOUISIANA BLUE, and DOWN TO A SUNLESS SEA, underwater diving adventure. Other noteworthy books are THE ONLY THING TO FEAR, a historical thriller, THE RETURN OF PHILO T. McGIFFIN, a comic novel of Annapolis, and the three volumes of The Civil War at Sea, FIRE ON THE WATERS, A COUNTRY OF OUR OWN, and THAT ANVIL OF OUR SOULS. He's also written two sailing thrillers, GHOSTING and THE WHITENESS OF THE WHALE. His work has been published in Britain, translated into Japanese, Dutch, Italian, Hugarian, and Serbo-Croatian; recorded for audiobooks, iPod downloads, and Kindle, and selected by the Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club and other book clubs. Rights to several properties have been sold or optioned for films. Poyer has taught or lectured at Annapolis, Flagler College, University of Pittsburgh, Old Dominion University, the Armed Forces Staff College, the University of North Florida, Christopher Newport University, and other institutions. He has been a guest on PBS's "Writer to Writer" series and on Voice of America, and has appeared at the Southern Festival of Books and many other literary events. He teaches in the MA/MFA in Creative Writing program at Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre and the Ossabaw Writers Retreat, and is a fellow of the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and a board member of the Northern Appalachia Review. He lives on Virginia's Eastern Shore with novelist Lenore Hart.
