It's September 1939, and Europe is on the brink of war. For recent University of Texas graduates Catherine Rose McLean and her sister, Louisa, this means cutting short their grand tour of the continent and finding safe passage home. But when a handsome member of the German resistance approaches Catherine in a Budapest nightclub and presses a frame of top-secret microfilm into her hands, she becomes the target of Nazi spies who will stop at nothing to safeguard Germany’s darkest secret. Among these spies, a deep-cover agent operating out of London called Vera Dreyfus, follows Catherine and Louisa aboard the British passenger liner S.S. Athenia so that she might obtain the film using “all necessary force.” Within hours of Britain declaring war on Germany, Athenia is caught in the crosshairs of history by a German U-boat hellbent on sinking her. When the first torpedo strikes, what begins as a desperate struggle for survival in the frigid waters of the North Atlantic leads to a shocking and deadly confrontation—one that could cost Catherine much more than just her life.

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​BLOOD OF ATHENIA was inspired by an extraordinary family connection to a little-known chapter in World War II history. My wife’s grandmother, Catherine Mackey, was twenty-three years old when her travels through Europe in the summer of 1939 were interrupted by the unthinkable. Her harrowing ordeal aboard S.S. Athenia the night it was torpedoed and sunk by a German U-Boat is the central event around which this novel is constructed. Set against the rise of fascism, BLOOD OF ATHENIA explores the all too relatable themes of political extremism, the manipulation of truth, and the vulnerability of ordinary people caught in the grinding gears of history.