Darien Library – Author Talk: Eric Jay Dolin, “The Wreck of the Mentor: A True Story of Death, Despair, and Deliverance in the Age of Sail”

Darien Library, Community Room
Thursday, July 23, 2026, 7:00pm–8:00pm

Darien Library, Darien Sail & Power Squadron, and Barrett Bookstore welcome back author Eric Jay Dolin to discuss his new book, “The Wreck of the Mentor: A True Story of Death, Despair, and Deliverance in the Age of Sail.” Selected by The New York Times as one of the most anticipated nonfiction books of 2026!

About the Book

From the best–selling author of Black Flags, Blue Waters comes the story of the American whaleship Mentor, wrecked in 1832 on a remote reef in the western Pacific. With supplies dwindling, the eleven surviving crewmen face not only the miseries of shipwreck in unfamiliar territory but also the profound uncertainty of contact with the Indigenous people of the Micronesian archipelago of Palau, who within days approach the deserted men brandishing axes, clubs, and spears. In this gripping saga of cultural collision, tribal wars, and dashed hopes, award–winning historian Eric Jay Dolin vividly reconstructs the Mentor’s doomed voyage, the years of perilous captivity, and the delicate negotiations and fraught naval rescue mission that followed.

Illustrated by more than 100 images and maps, The Wreck of the Mentor is at once a powerful story of survival and a revealing window into the great Age of Sail―a time when maritime ambition collided with local sovereignty, and when the outcome of one voyage rippled across oceans and empires.

About the Author

Eric Jay Dolin is the author of seventeen books, including Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America; A Furious Sky: The Five-Hundred-Year History of America’s Hurricanes; Black Flags, Blue Waters: The Epic History of America’s Most Notorious Pirates; and Rebels at Sea: Privateering in the American Revolution. His forthcoming book (June 2, 2026), is The Wreck of the Mentor: A True Story of Death, Despair, and Deliverance in the Age of Sail. Dolin’s books have won many awards including the John Lyman Award for U.S. Maritime History; Fraunces Tavern Museum Book Award; National Society Daughters of the American Revolution Excellence in American History Book Award for Adult Nonfiction; Samuel Eliot Morison Book Award for Naval Literature; L. Byrne Waterman Book Award for Outstanding Contributions to Research and Pedagogy in the Arts, Humanities, and Sciences; James P. Hanlan Book Award; and the Outdoor Writers Association of America Book Award. Many of his books have been chosen as “must reads” by the Massachusetts Center for the Book. Other honors include being chosen as a finalist for the Kirkus Prize, and as one of the best books of the year by The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, Kirkus Reviews, the Library Journal, and Booklist. Dolin lives in Marblehead, Massachusetts, with his family.