Hidden Cargo

By Robin Lloyd and Robin Lloyd

Book Overview

Five months after the end of the Civil War, Acting Navy Lieutenant Everett Townsend is awaiting discharge in Key West. The end of the war has left him uncertain about his future and full of regret about the end of his relationship with Emma, the Cuban American daughter of a Havana boarding house owner. His Spanish grandmother- a slave owner who runs a prosperous sugar plantation in the Cuban countryside- is dreaming that Everett will return and take over the family business, a prospect that sickens him.

Returning from a routine supply mission from Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas, he and his men are caught in a hurricane and witness a shipwreck in the Marquesas Keys. When they investigate, they discover a locked cargo hold with the dead bodies of Black freedmen. When Townsend reports this unsettling incident to his distracted Naval commander in Key West, he's encouraged to drop the matter. But he can't shake his suspicions that the poor souls from the cargo hold were destined for re-enslavement in the sugar fields of Spanish Cuba.

The murder of an American sailor in a Cuban port provides Townsend with a reason to return to Cuba and continue his investigation even as it reunites him with Emma who has joined the secretive Cuban resistance to Spanish colonial rule. A rescue of a Navy veteran leads to more clues and helps convince Townsend to become a government informant operating in the interior of Cuba. He goes to live with his Spanish grandmother at her sugar plantation in the Cuban countryside. There Townsend finds himself facing an impossible choice between the Cuban-American woman he loves and his tradition-bound Spanish grandmother. As he grapples with this clash of personalities, Townsend uncovers the details of a conspiracy which forces him to come face to face with his own family's close ties to slavery.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1493072315
• ISBN13: 9781493072316
• Release Date: May 2023
• Publisher: Lyons Press
• Length: 328 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.4" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Well written historical fiction

Hidden Cargo is a meticulously researched historical novel set in 1865 in Florida and Key West and delves into the little-known history of the slave trade after the end of the Civil War. The story follows Everett Townsend, a Union naval officer, who finds a sinking ship near Key West with drowned slaves locked in the hold who had been bound for Cuba. In his work investigating the illegal trade for the American government, he must confront the horrors of slavery and his own family's role in perpetuating it, as his grandmother is a wealthy Cuban plantation owner. I was previously unaware that freed slaves, who were American citizens, were kidnapped and sold into the slave trade in Cuba to work the plantations. I appreciated learning about this time in history even though it was difficult to read about. Hidden Cargo was well written and moved quickly, with plenty of tension and danger, especially in the latter two-thirds of the book. Thank you to BookishFirst for a copy to review.