The Gulf Queen

By Paul Ramirez

On Thanksgiving morning, 2005, fifteen-year-old Cristobal Garcia slipped out of his Corpus Christi home to sail across the Gulf of Mexico-disobeying his mother and chasing the freedom he was sure she'd never understand. Three days later, the boat sank in a storm. His sailing mentor drowned. And Cristobal disappeared into the vast blue emptiness of the Gulf. For twenty years, his mother Elena refused to believe he was dead. While the Coast Guard suspended their search, while friends and family urged her to move on, while her daughter grew up in the shadow of a ghost-Elena kept vigil. She maintained his room exactly as he'd left it. She hired private investigators. She never stopped searching. And against all odds, she was right. Pulled from the ocean by Mexican fishermen with no memory of who he was, Cristobal rebuilt his life from nothing. As Miguel Paz, he learned a new language, married, had children, and found peace in a remote Oaxaca village-never knowing that hundreds of miles away, his family was still looking for the boy he used to be. When a viral news clip finally bridges the impossible distance between them, both mother and son must answer the same question: How do you come home to a life you don't remember? How do you reconcile the person you were with the person you became? THE GULF QUEEN is a sweeping family saga about the lies we tell ourselves to survive, the fierce persistence of maternal love, and the possibility of living not one life but two-and finding wholeness in both.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0GM184227
• ISBN13: 9798247123361
• Release Date: February 2026
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 306 Pages
• Weight: 0.91 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"