Excerpt from The Marauders by Tom Cooper, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Wesley," Father Neely said. "Good to see you, son." He glanced up at the boat, said hello to Wes's father, who was coiling up the mooring rope. He only held up his hand and turned his back. Then he climbed the metal ladder up to the wheelhouse. Through the window Wes saw the spark of his lighter, the guttering flame of the candle nub beside the wheel. Another spark when his father lit a cigarette.

"You guys missed the blessing," Father Neely said, tactful enough to not say again.

"Running late tonight," Wes said.

"Shuh, of course," Father Neely said. He glanced up at the wheelhouse and smoothed down his smoke-yellowed mustache with his thumb and forefinger. He looked back at Wes and dug in his robe pocket and fished out a St. Christopher medallion. Wes hesitated. He knew his father wouldn't want it but neither could he exactly turn it down. He took the medallion and pocketed it and thanked Father Neely.

"I'll pray for a prosperous season," Father Neely said.

Wes thanked him again and said that they needed all the praying they could get.

* * *

Their boat, the Bayou Sweetheart, was a thirty-three- year- old Lafitte skiff, one of the few of its kind in Jeanette that survived the hurricane. Weeks after the storm, when Wes and his father began picking through the ruins, they found the boat miraculously intact, sitting on top of the levee as if placed there by a benevolent giant's hand.

Like many other Baratarians, Wes and his family had chosen to ride the storm out. Or, really, Wes's father had chosen for them. When Wes's family woke on the morning of August 28 and turned on the television, the weatherman on WGNO news out of New Orleans was predicting a Category 5 hurricane. One-hundred- and- fifty- mile- per- hour wind gusts, fifteen-foot storm surges, levee breaks. A monster.

The first winds were just beginning, moaning in the eaves, and out- side the sky had already blackened to charcoal, so dark the trees in the yard threw off a strange glow, as if lit from within.

"We should leave," Wes's mother said for the umpteenth time.

They stood before the old Zenith in the den. Still in their bedclothes, faces puffy with sleep.

"You know how many times they've said this and it turned out to be nothing?" Wes's father said. The worry wasn't yet showing in his eyes, but there was an edge in his voice.

Thunder shook the house and rattled the windowpanes. Their black Labrador, Max, scampered to the kitchen and hid under the table, where he watched them timorously, head on forepaws.

"We can stay in Baton Rouge," said Wes's mother. She meant her parents' place.

"Come on, Dad," Wes said, wondering how his father could be so blasé, wanting to take him by the shoulders and shake some sense into him. But his father was watching the television, rubbing his unshaven chin, hardly listening. "Then you and Wes go ahead and pack. But you better get to it. Now. Before the roads get too choked up."

"You too. You're going."

Wes's father shook his head as if this were out of the question. "I gotta tie down the boat. Help other guys with theirs. I gotta board up these windows. There's a million things."

"Listen to the TV," said Wes's mother.

"They always say this stuff. It's their job."

All morning Wes figured his father would come to his senses and change his mind, but no. And by afternoon, when the first bands of the storm lashed the Barataria, it was already too late to leave. That night the hurricane hammered Jeanette like a djinn. Within hours, houses and mobile homes were smashed apart and swept away like dollhouses. Docks ripped from land and carried down streets turned into raging rivers. Boats snapped away from their moorings and were sucked into riptides.

By the time the storm had run its course, several people in Jeanette drowned in the flood.

Excerpted from The Marauders by Tom Cooper. Copyright © 2015 by Tom Cooper. Excerpted by permission of Crown. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.