The World Between Fates

By NORMAN GOODWIN

The World Between Fates is a gritty, lyrical, and an honest coming-of-age novel set aboard a U.S. Navy destroyer in the Persian Gulf during the summer of 1985.

Rusty is a 21-year-old radar tech and reluctant philosopher, stuck on the USS John Adams with nothing but steel, stars, and sarcasm to keep him company. Life at sea blurs into a relentless cycle of drills, duty, and midnight watches-but it's the in-between moments that shape him most. Especially when he meets Yeoman Fitz: sharp-tongued, whip-smart, and utterly unlike anyone aboard his ship. What begins as a wary alliance soon deepens into something rare and complicated-a flicker of intimacy in the loneliest port call on Earth.

Beneath the warship's grinding machinery and gallows humor lies a deeper struggle. Rusty wrestles with meaning, morality, and the crushing indifference of the universe. What do honor, loyalty, or love mean in a world defined by orders and routine? What does it mean to matter, or to choose, when everything is predetermined by a clockwork universe?

Rusty's journey is one of quiet revelation, where philosophical reflection becomes a survival instinct. As he begins to challenge the routines and roles that once defined him, he discovers that meaning is not something found-but something chosen. And that selfhood, even in the most rigid systems, is never entirely lost.

Told in spare, lyrical prose and guided by a deep philosophical undercurrent, The World Between Fates is a meditation on identity, memory, and the forces that shape us-duty, desire, and the gravity of a single, lost connection. At its heart lies a romance not fully grasped, yet unforgettable: a meeting written in the margins of time, altered by distance, and sealed by the quiet machinery of fate.

This is a novel about the ache for something more-something real-when the stars overhead remain silent, and the universe offers no answers... only choices.

For readers of literary fiction that lingers. For those drawn to the '80s, Navy realism, solitude, silence, and the deep, uncertain spaces between us.

Buy now to receive a first edition copy and step into the space where fate, love, and identity collide.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0FX6DCYFK
• ISBN13: 9798263589806
• Release Date: October 2025
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 218 Pages
• Weight: 0.66 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.0" x 9.0"