The Ship's Baker Goes to War
A Novel of the 1898 Blockade

About this book:

Arthur Pym never wanted a war—he only wanted his dough to rise properly. But when the luxury liner *City of Rochester* is seized by the U.S. Navy and repainted the gray of a wolf’s coat, the ship’s baker finds himself pressed into service on a floating powder keg bound for the Cuban blockade. With five thousand hungry soldiers to feed, a purser determined to swap his precious Hungarian flour for weevil-ridden navy issue, and a crew teetering on mutiny, Pym wages his own quiet battle in the galley: between craft and bureaucracy, between the yeast that lives and the men who might not.

Steeped in the salt, coal smoke, and buttery heat of a turn-of-the-century engine room, *The Ship’s Baker Goes to War* turns a forgotten corner of the Spanish–American War into a visceral, page-turning drama. From the sunlit quays of Naples to the iron-dark holds where sabotage smells like flour dust, every chapter rises with the tension of a loaf in a hot oven—golden on the outside, alive with danger within.

If you love Patrick O’Brian’s maritime mastery but crave a hero who fights with a dough scraper instead of a cutlass, climb aboard. Arthur Pym’s war isn’t fought with broadsides—it’s kneaded, proved, and baked one perfect crust at a time.