THE FINEST HOURS

The Finest Hours is now a major motion picture from Walt Disney Pictures starring Chris Pine, Casey Affleck, Ben Foster, Eric Bana, and Holliday Grainger. Directed by Craig Gillespie, the movie is set to be released in January 2016 and is stacking up to be this decade’s Perfect Storm.

In the winter of 1952, New England was battered by the most brutal nor’easter in years. As the weather wreaked havoc on land, the freezing Atlantic became a wind-whipped zone of peril, setting the stage for one of the most heroic rescue stories ever lived. In the early hours of Monday, February 18th, while the storm raged, two oil tankers, the Pendleton and the Fort Mercer, found themselves in the same horrifying predicament. Built with “dirty steel,” and not prepared to withstand such ferocious seas, both tankers split in two, leaving the dozens of men on board utterly at the Atlantic’s mercy. The Finest Hours is the gripping, true story of the valiant attempt to rescue the souls huddling inside the broken halves of the two ships. The spellbinding tale is overflowing with breathtaking scenes, as boats capsize, bows and sterns crash into one another, and men hurl themselves into the raging sea in their terrifying battle for survival. Not all of the eighty-four men caught at sea in the midst of the brutal storm survived, but considering the odds, it’s a miracle—and a testament to their bravery—that any came home to tell their tale at all. Michael J. Tougias is an award-winning author and co-author of 23 books. Among his other bestsellers are Fatal Forecast, Overboard, King Philip’s War, and There’s a Porcupine In My Outhouse: The Vermont Misadventures of a Mountain Man Wannabe. Casey Sherman is the national bestselling author of eight books, including A Rose for Mary (aka) Search for the Strangler, Animal: The Bloody Rise and Fall of the Mob’s Most Feared Assassin, Bad Blood, Black Irish, Black Dragon, and Boston Strong. Sherman has appeared on dozens of television programs including The Today Show, Dateline NBC, CBS 48 Hour Mysteries, America’s Most Wanted, and The View.