This document provides a synopsis for a Christmas trilogy titled "Awaiting The Thaw". The trilogy follows a sailor over three Christmases as he returns home from a voyage, only to have his love turn away from him. Wounded, he runs back to sea, embarking on a whaling voyage that takes him to extreme locations around the world. Through his experiences of loss, isolation, friendship in strange places, and rescue missions, the sailor matures and comes to better understand the love he left behind. The synopsis teases themes of Homer's Odyssey, Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, and Melville's Moby Dick within the nautical adventure story.

1. A Synopsis
Awaiting The Thaw
A Christmas Trilogy
By Gerald J. Furnkranz
Illustrated With the Nautical Art of Gerald J. Furnkranz

2. Awaiting The Thaw
A Christmas Trilogy

3. A Christmas Trilogy,
A swashbuckling high seas adventure rolling in from the world’s oceans.
Woven around three Christmases!

4. Though not written to be so, it possesses;
a dash of Homer’s Odyssey,

5. a splash of Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea,

6. a touch of Melville’s Moby Dick,

7. Our hero is returning from a long and arduous voyage to the orient

8. Debarking his ship in
Old New York Harbor

9. He is aching for home with family and his love,
celebrating Christmas, leaving the sea forever in his wake

10. Love turns its back on our hero. Wounded, he runs away,
returning to the sea

11. This time on a whaler, voyaging to the
freezing and burning extremes of the earth,
facing unknown spirits of the sea

12. He experiences the exhilaration and terror of whaling

13. Life

14. Death

15. Faith

16. Hope

17. Respect

18. Our hero grows
• Through loss and abandonment
• Living the cold harsh realities and burning pain
• Surviving, then thriving in isolation
• Finding friendship in strange places
• Learning solitude and loneliness are friends
• Understanding the love he left behind
• Tempered by life

19. His adventure deepens into seemingly
eternal darkness

20. Sailing the Arctic endless winter’s night

21. Discovering a light to survival

22. In the twinkling eyes of helplessness

23. Rescued

24. Regretfully leaving friends behind

25. Homeward Bound

26. Home Again At Long Last