Coffin Light

A sailing story of an embittered Michigan town where racist leaders and a festering hate crime influence a younger generation to oppress their Hispanic population.

Local rednecks hate Senor Bendolly, calling him the Farm-Stealing Mexican. Their hatred moves beyond words, however, when they drown the old farmer’s son in nearby Lake Michigan.

Senor Bendolly only roots himself deeper into the farm after burying his son alone and hiding the young man’s pregnant wife. She stays hidden for 15 years before returning to the farm with her daughter, Samantha, who wants to know how her father could have drowned.

Answers aren’t forthcoming on the farm so Samantha heads to town. She hears a boy bragging about a murdered Mexican’s ghost haunting the Coffin Light lighthouse and makes the connection with her father. She believes it only takes time to run the race out of racist, but the town isn’t so sure it wants to lift the curse of a man’s death that seems to haunt it.

One night in a thick fog, Douglass K Pearson and his father grounded their sailboat near the abandoned Grays Reef Lighthouse in the Straights of Mackinac. That 1982 scare became the backdrop for Coffin Light, a novel that exposes Michigan’s dangerous dance with oppression.