No Traveller Returns

Name: No Traveller Returns
Rating: 4.4 (824 reviews)

by Louis L’Amour

First published 2018

Amazon

4.4(824)

Set in the late 1930s, as the approach of the Second World War shadows a Pacific freighter voyage, No Traveller Returns is a novel built around the pressures of its historical setting. Louis L'Amour's long-lost first novel, faithfully completed by his son, takes readers on a voyage into danger and violence on the high seas. Fate is a ship. As the shadows of World War II gather, the SS Lichenfield is westbound across the Pacific carrying eighty thousand barrels of highly explosive naphtha. The cargo alone makes the journey perilous, with the entire crew aware that one careless moment could lead to disaster. But yet another sort of peril haunts the Lichenfield. Even beyond their day-to-day existence, the lives of the crew are mysteriously intertwined. Though each has his own history, dreams and jealousies, longing and rage, all are connected by a deadly web of chance and circumstance.

The historical background is World War II. L’Amour uses practical details of travel, work, weather, weapons, distance and local authority to make the setting more than a backdrop. The result combines fast-moving adventure with a strong sense of how isolation, weak institutions and rapid economic change could shape individual choices.