As lightning crackles over a rolling sea, a young boy clings to life amidst the waves. His family… his friends… all that he’s ever known… have been taken by the storm. As the wreck comes apart and the icy fingers of death tighten their grip, the boy is given a new chance at life on the sands of the Outer Banks.

Thirty years later on that same far flung spit of sand at Cape Hatteras, seven men of courage face the sea and the storms beyond as the first men of the United States Lifesaving Service. Recruited and trained by that same boy grown to manhood, daring confederate blockade runner Captain Thomas Hooper, the men of Cape Hatteras Station are the only hope for sailors in distress at the treacherous Diamond Shoals. As Thomas Hooper readies his men to fight the sea and tries to keep them from fighting each other he realizes that the souls he’s there to save may very well be those of his men and himself.

This is ... Surfmen.

Charles “Chip” Marshall is a freelance writer and student of history from White Hall, MD. Having spent a lifetime in the woods and on the water as a fisherman, a farmer, a hunting guide, a butcher and a cook, Mr. Marshall has lived and worked among the characters in his books, common men and women with scarred, callous stitched hands.

He is a member of the US Lifesaving Service Heritage Association, North Carolina Watermen United, and the Maryland Watermen Association. Mr. Marshall lives on the family farm in a log home of his own design and construction with his wife and three children.