Fernandina Beach author's 'Mariner's Tale' tells of love and a storm, wins movie contract

Joe Palmer grew up in Waycross, Georgia, wishing he was living down on Florida's northern border in Fernandina Beach, a quaint and funky oceanfront town so popular with south Georgians that some called it Waycross-by-the-Sea.

He eventually found a way to make a living there, so it seemed natural that when he set about writing what would be his first published novel, it would be set in Fernandina.

Well, at least in a place very much like Fernandina, which in "A Mariner's Tale" is called Morgan's Island, a salty place between the Intracoastal and the Atlantic Ocean, at the most northeastern point in Florida.

Palmer's story focuses on Jack Merkel, a 64-year-old sailor and boatyard owner, a one-time merchant seaman and shrimper with a big tragedy in his past. His life changes when a troubled young man and a beautiful divorcee enter it — and then changes some more as a fearsome hurricane wanders restlessly over Florida, headed, eventually, right at Morgan's Island.

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Palmer, 68, a Navy veteran and one-time private investigator and journalist, has already had more luck than most debut authors. The film rights to "A Mariner's Tale" were recently optioned by Tristan Productions Inc., an independent film company based in New York City.

Still, negotiating a contract to make a movie is one thing. Getting it made is another, he knows: Many such projects stagnate, then die.

"It's exciting. Knowing it could go there but, being pragmatic about it, you know, it may not go there," Palmer says. "So it's nice just being considered."

'I've got an idea'

The vague beginnings of "A Mariner's Tale" came to him while he was working on his retirement project: restoring a sailboat, a 1969 Cal 28. It was a complicated and all-consuming task, and at a particularly frustrating point in the job he temporarily gave up, got a Gatorade and put on some music in the boat.

That's when he heard Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits fame, singing a song called "Into the Sky" about a tough old sailor who'd sailed the world in a boat he built.

He was struck by one passage in particular: And the vagabond wind whispers over the bay/And the songs and the laughter are carried away in the sky.

He went home and told his wife Pam: "I've got an idea for a novel." So he went into his office, sat down and wrote four chapters, not really knowing yet where it would take his story. Then it all fell into place.

Palmer, a longtime sailor, muses on all it took to get him to this point.

“Writing a novel is kind of like sailing," he says. "You know, you’re right here and you know you want to be over there but — a sailboat being a sailboat — most of the time you can’t take a straight line to get there.”

A dream fulfilled

Palmer's early years in Waycross weren't easy. His father was cruel and abusive, he says. His family was poor, and he was self-conscious about his poverty and the condition of the house where he lived.

"I just didn't feel good about myself while living there," he says. "I had to leave, I just couldn't stay in the atmosphere there. My Navy was my ticket out of there."

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He joined the Navy at 17, then worked as a newspaper reporter in Bradenton and Macon, Ga., before landing a spot at The Florida Times-Union's Fernandina Beach bureau in 1986.

Finally, his dream to live in Fernandina was fulfilled.

He later became public relations director at a local hospital, then started his own private-detective business. He enjoyed the investigative work but discovered he was a lousy businessman.

So in 1995 when an opportunity came to become an investigator for the federal Public Defender's Office, he took it, even if it meant moving to Tampa, then Atlanta, then Orlando. Ten years later he was able to get in at the Jacksonville office, where he could live once more in Fernandina.

He stayed there until he retired in 2012, after which he spent a decade writing a folksy column — Cup of Joe — for the local News-Leader.

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Palmer loves his town but worries that it, like so many other desirable places, is changing too quickly and too much. “We’re losing that special vibe this place had for so long," he says. "Growth is inevitable, but the growth here is off the charts.”

Still, it provided fine inspiration for his fictional Morgan's Island, in geography and feel. Some characters are, he says, "hodgepodges" of Fernandina locals, and one of the main characters, a tough but compassionate judge named J. Harlan Kicklighter, is inspired by Senior U.S. District Judge Henry Lee Adams of Jacksonville.

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The only clearly recognizable character to Fernandina locals is a fictional Great Dane, Pogy, who is clearly modeled after Palmer's own Great Dane, Harley.

Harley is giant. "I'm 6-3, and he can stand on his legs and put his paws on my shoulder and his head on my head," Palmer says.

And he's better known in Fernandina than his human companion.

"Oh, he's the superstar," Palmer says.

Breaking the chain

Palmer is working on his second novel, which he's calling "Of Locusts and Wild Honey.” Starting in 1962 and spanning 20 years, it follows five misfit kids from a South Georgia town drawn from his childhood in Waycross.

He relates to those misfits, he says. "My relationship with my hometown has always been complicated. It's gotten better. I can go there now, and visit my cousins. and not feel that sense of not-belonging"

Even in Waycross, though, Palmer had literary aspirations. You can credit those to his young high school creative writing teacher, Elaine Thomas, who gave him an A+ on an early assignment and told him he had talent — more proof of the role teachers can play in a student's life.

"She told me that I had a gift, and that I should not let it go, that I should pursue it. We’re still friends," he said. The teacher, now Elaine Stephens, teaches at South Georgia State College, and recently her old student came back to talk about writing with some of her current students.

Over the years, Palmer — a longtime fan of the late Pat Conroy — had written some short stories, one of which got published by a literary magazine at the University of North Florida. He wrote and then stashed away a novel he is now embarrassed by, and dabbled with “some very, very bad poetry.”

"A Mariner's Tale," published in late 2020, was a good bit more successful, getting picked up by an independent publisher, getting that movie deal and gaining numerous good reviews on Amazon. It was also a finalist in the general fiction category at the 2021 American Fiction Awards.

He gives much of the credit for the book to his wife Pam, to whom he has been married 44 years. "She's my true north, my beacon and my eternal love, the wind that fills my sails," he says. "I don't think I could've written the novel without her."

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Palmer has had to face his mortality in recent years: He had the first of several heart attacks in April 2006, leading to stents and eventually double coronary bypass surgery.

"I'm not scared of dying, but there is a little sense that I have to finish this before I die," he says. "It's something I've thought about, sure."

Looking back, Palmer sees all the things in his life, the good and the difficult, taking him to where he is now.

"I'm a big believer in fate. I would not go back and undo the bad things that happened to me," he says. "My upbringing, it made me who I am. I am not my dad, I'm not the father to my boys that he was to me. I broke that chain. Even the heart attacks — it all leads to here."

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Fernandina Beach author gets movie contract for 'Mariner's Tale' book