Bart Gonnissen

Bart Gonnissen has spent his life going to sea and, eventually, meeting ships halfway. A former master mariner, he now works as a maritime pilot in Antwerp, Belgium, guiding vessels many times his own tonnage up the Scheldt to one of Europe’s great harbors — a job that still begins, in every kind of weather, the way it has for centuries: with a small boat, a moving ship, and a pilot ladder.

His books are a love letter to that profession — to the covenant of coming aboard a stranger’s vessel, taking the conn, and bringing her home — relocated some centuries forward and several light-years out, where the water is harder to find but the job, he suspects, would be much the same.

He lives in Antwerp with Frida, a Cane Corso of considerable tonnage and impeccable watch-keeping instincts, who has heard every chapter of his books read aloud and has yet to offer a single note. He interprets this as approval.