Ahabs Folly
Published: June 1, 2026
Description
Al Ferreira is thirty-three years old, working-class New Bedford, the kind of man
who repaints his fence and grows tomatoes that come in better than they have any
right to. He is also, quietly and against his better judgment, the latest in a long
line of men drawn to something in the water. Ahab's Folly is a novel about obsession
in the key of ordinary life — about the pull of the sea, the weight of family
history, and what happens when a modest man inherits an immodest problem.
who repaints his fence and grows tomatoes that come in better than they have any
right to. He is also, quietly and against his better judgment, the latest in a long
line of men drawn to something in the water. Ahab's Folly is a novel about obsession
in the key of ordinary life — about the pull of the sea, the weight of family
history, and what happens when a modest man inherits an immodest problem.
Back Cover
Alfred Ferreira is thirty-three years old, former US Navy, repaints his own fence, grows tomatoes that come in better than they have any right to. He is, by any measure, a modest man in a modest life in New Bedford, Massachusetts — the same city that launched the *Pequod*, the same harbour where obsession has always found its vessel.
He receives information he cannot unknow. He tells his wife. They make a decision.
Eight billion people have no warning. The Ferreiras have three weeks.
*Ahab's Folly* is the story of what comes after — a 90-foot ketch named for the most famous dark obsession in American literature, bought cheap because no working sailor wants her; a family running south through a dying world; a child shot on the deck at St. Helena while his mother reaches past everything she knows; and the most remote inhabited island on earth, where the question of whether they have any right to survive is answered, slowly, by the fact that they do.
Alfred Ferreira knew. He used what he knew to save four people. He told one friend, who couldn't come. He has replayed that conversation ten thousand times. He functions. He is a good father and a capable sailor. The guilt is always present, a low current beneath everything, surfacing in the quiet hours of night watches.
This is not a story about the end of the world. It is a story about what a man owes the world versus what he owes his children, and whether love that chooses itself can ever be forgiven.
The folly was real. So was the survival. Both are true.
*"The book that Herman Melville was writing around.
Patient, devastating, and specific about the sea."*
He receives information he cannot unknow. He tells his wife. They make a decision.
Eight billion people have no warning. The Ferreiras have three weeks.
*Ahab's Folly* is the story of what comes after — a 90-foot ketch named for the most famous dark obsession in American literature, bought cheap because no working sailor wants her; a family running south through a dying world; a child shot on the deck at St. Helena while his mother reaches past everything she knows; and the most remote inhabited island on earth, where the question of whether they have any right to survive is answered, slowly, by the fact that they do.
Alfred Ferreira knew. He used what he knew to save four people. He told one friend, who couldn't come. He has replayed that conversation ten thousand times. He functions. He is a good father and a capable sailor. The guilt is always present, a low current beneath everything, surfacing in the quiet hours of night watches.
This is not a story about the end of the world. It is a story about what a man owes the world versus what he owes his children, and whether love that chooses itself can ever be forgiven.
The folly was real. So was the survival. Both are true.
*"The book that Herman Melville was writing around.
Patient, devastating, and specific about the sea."*