The Devil's Well at Sabine
A Novel of Oil and Obsession

About this book:

In the swamp-choked waters where Louisiana bleeds into Texas, Silas Vance is building a folly: a wooden derrick planted on pine pilings thirty miles out in the Gulf of Mexico, chasing a salt dome that men like Standard Oil have already written off. It's 1927, and the only things holding Vance's rig above the waves are rusted iron, green oak, and the stubborn nerve of men like Tate Harlan—roughnecks who know the water always wins in the end. But the black sheen bubbling up from the seabed isn't just oil; it's a promise, a fever, and a trap.

As the timber groans under the weight of steam engines and the Gulf's currents test every bolt, something older than the rig stirs in the deep mud. Sour gas. Blowout pressure. A darkness that doesn't show on any survey map. With corporate rivals circling like sharks and a hurricane season looming, Vance drives his crew toward a strike that could make them kings—or bury them in the silt. The well doesn't care about contracts, mortgages, or the lives of the men who tend it. It only waits.

Atmospheric, visceral, and steeped in the grease and glory of America's first true offshore gamble, *The Devil's Well at Sabine* is a novel of obsession written in salt, steel, and blood. For readers who love the grit of *There Will Be Blood* and the claustrophobic tension of *The Terror*, this is historical fiction that doesn't just recreate the past—it puts you on the catwalk as the drill bit turns, the pressure builds, and the devil comes calling for his due.