Early Iceland Setting For Young Writer’s Debut Novel; Yocum Sends Detective To Australia

If you enjoy well-researched fiction featuring a strong sense of place, then two new novels are for you. 

One is the debut historical novel by a recent college graduate and the other is the fifth installment of an ongoing crime saga by a Chatham resident.

“Muireall’s Iceland: A Viking Saga” (Watermark, 2026) was written by John Trudeau of Greenwich, Conn., a Chatham summer resident with a keen interest in history. Trudeau interned for several years with the Chatham Historical Society (and also with the Chatham Anglers). In June he graduated from the College of William & Mary with a bachelor’s degree in history.

But it was a trip to Iceland in February 2020 that spurred Trudeau to write the first chapter of the book.

“The story is in particular inspired by the Reykjavik Saga Museum and its descriptions of British Isle captives transitioning to life in Viking-age Iceland,” he said in an email interview last week. “Visits to the National Museum of Iceland and other locations around the country informed a lot of the book’s details.”

Back at home after that fact-finding mission, Trudeau researched Viking weaponry, customs, and day-to-day life by reading a number of books and conducting online research. During his senior year at Greenwich High School, he completed a rough draft of the entire novel over the course of five weeks. Dawn Dinnan, owner of Watermark Office Services in Chatham, and Marie Williams, Watermark’s former owner, worked with Trudeau on editing the draft.

“Stylistically, the book’s biggest inspirations are the writing of renowned author Bernard Cornwell, whose work I greatly admire,” Trudeau says. Cornwell, who lives in Chatham, is the author of the Saxon Chronicles Series which is set in England in the ninth and 10th centuries, a time of Danish Viking raids.

“Muireall’s Iceland” opens in 903 when the Viking Thorgeir Erlinson and his men are preparing to raid a small town on the coast of Scotland, a country that Trudeau knows well because he lived in Scotland for two years while completing a joint-degree program at the University of Saint Andrews.

After a spirited battle of swords, shields and spears along the shore, the Viking crew makes its way to the village where Muireall and her family are hiding. Thorgeir’s first impression of Muireall is that she is “the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.” Soon, the kidnapped Muireall finds herself on a ship to Reykjavik, where she will marry Thorgeir’s son Hakon. For Muireall, the transition to Iceland with its dark, frigid winters and active volcanoes is not an easy one. And the Vikings continue their violent raids.

Trudeau calls the book “an interesting exploration of how people adapt and change themselves to deal with changing circumstances.”

“What is the core identity of someone like Muireall if she has to change so much about herself to survive?” he asks. “The story is also, of course, an origin story for Iceland, both in its ethnic makeup and its unique government structure.”

The novel is “ultimately the story of the Viking captives taken from the British Isles and how they adapted into the nascent Iceland settlements,” he adds.

For his next novel, Trudeau is again working in the historical fiction genre. This time he is writing a thriller set in 1920s New York. 

Trudeau will sign copies of “Muireall’s Iceland” at Yellow Umbrella Books in Chatham on Saturday, Aug. 29 from noon to 3 p.m.

In addition to his Cape Cod Mystery Series set partly in Chatham and on Monomoy, Keith Yocum has written a quintet of thrillers starring investigator Dennis Cunningham. The newest offering is “Never Never of Evil” (2026). The quintet began with “Color of Blood” in 2016. As well as Cunningham, who is ex-CIA, the books feature Cunningham’s girlfriend Judy White, an inspector with the Australian Federal Police.

“The Outback is a dangerous place to go missing,” the book’s cover proclaims, and that’s no joke. First, the headless body of the leader of a secret U.S. intelligence program is discovered hidden deep in the Outback. Shortly after, the body of a young woman is found with a severed head. Is this the handiwork of a deranged serial killer? Or is it the work of someone with an equally sinister agenda?

For those tracking the relationship of Dennis and Judy through the series, this one “brings Dennis and Judy’s relationship to a boil,” Yocum says.

Yocum did extensive research in Australia for his book. “The interesting part about researching this novel was returning to Exmouth, Western Australia after 58 years and imagining how the characters would interact in the heat and isolation there,” Yocum says. Yocum knows well what he’s describing as his mother was a native of Perth and he spent a part of his childhood there in the late 1960s. At that time Exmouth had a “brand new U.S. Naval Communications Station” built to communicate with the U.S. nuclear submarine fleet in the Indian Ocean. Exmouth is also famous for its reef and marine life.

And let’s not forget the two emus who Yocum awarded a cameo appearance in his book.

Yocum is an Amazon bestselling author. His books are available in Yellow Umbrella Books and in online stores.

Harwich author David Zeni’s book “Sail Four: A Submarine Story” (Mr. Ghost Books, 2025) has won a “Finalist” medal in Chicago for the 2026 Next Generation Indie Book Awards. Zeni’s book is an account of the sinking of the U.S. Navy submarine the S-4 off Provincetown in 1927 with 40 men trapped inside. The 340-page book is exhaustively researched and beautifully illustrated with photos from the 1920s. Zeni will sign copies of his book at Yellow Umbrella Books on Friday, Aug. 28 from 1 to 3 p.m.