Author of the Month: Thomas C. Sanger
Author of the Month Thomas C. Sanger is a San Diego-based author who has written for a variety of publications and audiences during a thirty-year career in journalism and corporate communications. He worked as a reporter for the Associated Press and KABC radio in Los Angeles, researched and wrote television documentary scripts in Australia, and directed corporate communications for a major Southern California energy company. Sanger is the author of numerous articles and non-fiction books. Without Warning is his first novel.
Based on actual people and events, Without Warning tells the little-known story of Athenia, the first British ship sunk by Germany in World War II. In the novel, Athenia’s Chief Officer Barnet Copland leaves Glasgow under uncertain circumstances in late summer 1939. Among the ship’s 1,100 passengers are six people from disparate backgrounds hoping to escape the threat of war. In Germany, Fritz-Julius Lemp, a brash young submarine captain heads to sea, eager to prove himself. Lemp torpedoes Athenia a few hours after England enters the war. Thrust into a conflict they believed they had escaped, passengers and crew face life-and-death decisions, and Copland becomes a reluctant hero. Twenty months later, Copland and Lemp meet again in a fateful encounter only one of them will survive.