Fire Off Jupiter

Fire Off Jupiter
by Howard Mark Hines
Book 1 of 5, in the U-Boats in Paradise series

In 1942, German submarines turned the ocean off Palm Beach into a war zone, sinking ships close enough for people on the beach to watch them burn.
Eighteen-year-old Pat saw it coming, but no one believed her. From the deck of a German U-boat to the beaches and back roads of Palm Beach, Fire Off Jupiter brings to life a true and astonishing chapter of World War II almost forgotten by history.
It begins on her birthday, February 20, 1942, at a beach party with fireworks her grandparents supplied. While everyone else watches the sky, Pat sees something long and dark sitting low on the ocean. Two nights later the tanker SS Republic is torpedoed off Jupiter, and the fire can be seen for miles.
Then a quiet young stranger turns up in the dunes. He says he is a fisherman from up the coast, but his accent does not fit. Pat is drawn to him anyway, in a town where trusting the wrong person could cost everything.
As German submarines slip through the dark waters off Jupiter, the bright lights of Palm Beach make an easy target. Ships explode on the horizon. Oil fires light up the night sky. Neighbors become strangers, and the war comes home to a community that thinks it is safe.
Rich with the real places of old Palm Beach, from the sandy lanes of the island to the lonely Houses of Refuge along the coast, this is a story of first love, family secrets and a girl who would not stop watching the horizon.
Sixty-six years later, Pat is finally ready to tell the whole story. Fire Off Jupiter is the first book in the U-Boats in Paradise series, a sweeping saga of war, family and a young woman whose life is changed forever by the night the ocean caught fire.
The story continues in Book Two, Lights Out.

by Howard Mark Hines
HMH Publishing, Division of HowardMarkHines, LLC
@2026 Protected by all US Laws