A year has passed since the old world ended in a terrible flash. Just as the tiny island of Cedar Key is settling into a new way of living, a figure from its past arrives on the horizon commanding a fleet of sailing ships. A dark chapter from Cedar Key's history is reopened against the devastated world of the present, and war is coming as inexorably as the tides.
In 1998, Isaac Skipjack's father was killed for stealing clams from other clam farmers. 17-year-old Isaac was left to fend for himself. He is taken in by a prominent waterman on Cedar Key, who becomes a surrogate father to the boy. When Isaac learns this surrogate was potentially involved in his real father's death, he leaves the island, hurt and vengeful. Two decades later, after the great experiment of humanity failed when nuclear blasts irradiated horizons around the world, Isaac, now a Senior Chief Petty Officer in the United States Coast Guard, leads a crew of survivors in a search for a home away from the nuclear devastation. When Isaac learns that his former island home has largely survived the blasts, he leads the young Coasties in his care toward Cedar Key, toward the unresolved hurt and betrayals he left behind there, toward a life and death collision with the islanders and the ghosts of his past.
Forever, Cedar Key is a standalone follow to the Florida Writers Association medalist for literary fiction Godspeed, Cedar Key.
