Despite a few flaws, this well-paced romantic adventure yarn about a lost ship full of gold will please history buffs who like faith fiction. Morrisey (Yucatan Deep) opens with an intriguing prologue in which a Confederate family attempts to hide a mysterious package deep in the heart of Florida's Twin Springswith tragic results. One hundred and forty years later, University of Michigan graduate student Jennifer Cassidy ("cute as the proverbial button") is hot on the trail of the secret. Helping her is hunky widower Beck Easton, a seemingly flawless, teetotaling Christian shipwreck diver who has "biceps like firm bread loaves" and is equally at home flying small aircraft or whipping up gourmet spinach pasta. If what they discover pans out, history will be rewritten and both will become rich beyond their wildest dreams. But they have to outwit the bad guys first. Morrisey's knowledge of diving adds colorful and precise details to the underwater scenes, and the plot offers plenty of surprises. However, Morrisey relies on tired novelist tricks (characters described as they look into a mirror) and the occasional humor falls flat, as when Jennifer makes a stab at a pun: "Beck Easton seemed to have new depths at every turn." Although readers may find themselves doubting the choice Beck and Jennifer make at the conclusion, they will still enjoy the journey.
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Cave diving and history collide in this pleasant thriller about a Christian dive instructor, Beck Easton, who's hired to do research by a young graduate student named Jennifer Cassidy. Cassidy suspects that somewhere down south there's a fortune in gold for the taking. However, their plans are interrupted by a man who wants the gold in order to control Cuba.

One glaring mistake caught my attention: Jennifer is a second year MS student in information science (sleuthing out facts, as she puts it) and she doesn't know when the Nixon administration was? Come on. Elementary school students know this!

Easton practices karate one morning on a secluded beach. I can understand his learning this in the military, but consider this: The Economist magazine recently reported: "Most, if not all, of the martial arts are inextricably linked to the three main East Asian religions, Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism." Another source adds: "Everything done in karate--every movement, every feeling--can be traced to some principle of Zen." Zen is a sect of Buddhism that emphasizes religious meditation. These religious roots pose a serious problem for Christians in view of the Bible's words at 2 Corinthians 6:17: "`Therefore get out from among [false worshipers], and separate yourselves,' says Jehovah, `and quit touching the unclean thing.'" How can you practice Christianity and link yourself with Eastern religions through martial arts?

There is a lot of history to wade through in this plot, and Morrissey does a decent job of weaving real life (he mentions the wreck of the Central America) and fiction.

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