Hidden Cargo
Following up his blockade-running bonanza in Harbor of Spies, Lloyd returns with another authentic adventure with American Navy acting lieutenant Everett Townsend hot upon the trail of rebel slavers in Hidden Cargo. It is 1865, and Townsend runs supply missions to the Dry Tortugas while waiting for his discharge papers to arrive in Key West. Caught in a violent hurricane, he steers his ship towards the Marquesas Keys and spots a shipwreck with a cargo hold filled with dead bodies. Suspecting the dead men were freedmen shanghaied by raiders selling them to plantations in Cuba and Brazil, Townsend’s inquiries bring him to the attention of the local U.S. authorities, who enlist him as a government informant.
He goes undercover to investigate from the grounds of Mon Bijou, his Spanish grandmother’s sprawling sugar plantation deep in the Cuban countryside. Accompanying him is Levi Jacobs, who risks his freedom and very life by leaving the backwaters of Florida to search for his two kidnapped sons in Cuba. Townsend wrestles with the guilt of his family associations with slavery just as he follows the trail of a clutch of unsavory ex-Confederates bent on restoring their slave paradise in South America.
Lloyd’s descriptions of the exotic Cuban locales and the hot politics of the island are wonderfully rendered, as is Townsend’s unique partnership with Jacobs that provides both men with an opportunity to build a bridge toward a more hopeful future. Along the way, Townsend learns his lost love, a Cuban American woman named Emma, is working for an underground Cuban revolutionary movement aiming to overthrow the hated Spanish overseers. Will Townsend find the murderers, and will Jacobs find his boys? Lloyd’s pacing is pitch-perfect and makes Hidden Cargo a thrilling read for salts of all ages.
