Is a Ship Burning? first published in 1938, is Richard Sale's novel of action, adventure and romance aboard an ill-fated cruise ship. Narrator John Banion, the ship's communications officer, describes the passengers and disastrous fire and sinking, followed by days adrift at sea in a small lifeboat. From the dustjacket: A few wisps of smoke drifting up from below, a muffled shout, the sound of running feet and that all-pervading, cloying smell-the one catastrophe that terrifies all men who follow the sea...The San Marino was a fire! Later, when they pulled Banion on the raft, his sensation was one of sheer vacuity, as though the earth had dissolved leaving him there alone with the others; Faroni, the gangster, helpless and abject without his gun; the young man Kilgore, who breathed and spoke, but had died inside; G. Emery Harrington, whose stock certificates and directorships for once gave him no advantage over "Stokehold" McGilley, the other survivor... This is more than a swift exciting picture of a dramatic episode. It is a brilliant piece of writing. Mr. Sale has caught most effectively the overwhelming vastness of the sea, and against a background of sinister disaster he has spun the brief but vital thread of an intensely human love affair

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