Man Overboard!

"Man Overboard!" by F. Marion Crawford is a maritime fiction novella about dealing with loss, figuring out who you are, and the idea of ghosts, all happening on a ship. The story looks at the sad things that happen to sailors and how terrible memories can mess with your head when you live life at sea. It tells the story of the ship "Helen B. Jackson" and its crew but mainly focuses on twin brothers, Jim and Jack Benton; a bad storm causes Jim to fall into the sea. After this, strange things start happening that really freak out the crew. When Jack returns home, he is haunted greatly by the loss of his brother, but when he tries to begin fresh with a girl named Mamie, it becomes difficult to know what is real and what isn't. As Jack starts acting stranger and stranger, the narrator sees weird things, making it seem like Jim's spirit might still be around. The story builds to a scary ending where Jack dies because of something mysterious, making you wonder about how grief affects us, where his identity ends and his brothers begins. Crawford does a great job mixing love and loss into a story that's creepy and keeps you on the edge of your seat.