Once A Welder

A Novel

Jimmy McKee had seen a painter burnt to death and a rigger crushed by a propeller at the shipyard before he turned twenty-one. But he didn’t know there were more sinister ways to die on the waterfront … ways employed by insidious men motivated by greed and power.

Novel by Jim Brennan

Available on Amazon

Jimmy McKee finds purpose as a welder at the Philadelphia Navy Yard constructing boilers that power aircraft carriers at a time when the Navy mandates using a robotic welding process that guarantees to save money at the expense of shipyard jobs. But when the robotic welds fail during sea trials on the USS Saratoga, an influential Navy admiral blames the leaking boilers on human error and orders a tiger team of welders and boilermakers to make repairs at the ship’s homeport in Florida. Just as the team is set to finish, four men are killed in a horrific accident.

Jimmy discovers that one of the dead men had information that proved the robotic welding process was scientifically flawed. He begins to look into Maestro Fusion, the company who pioneered the process, and uncovers a conspiracy that reaches the highest echelons of the Navy.