Book excerpt: Willie Cormack hates the sea. He sees it in his nightmares, the raging ocean full of the ghosts of drowned fishermen, beckoning to him. But Willie lives on a peninsula on the west coast of Ireland and the sea is all around him. The only way to make a living is from the sea, and Willie is afraid of his future. And then a lone sailor is shipwrecked on the coast in a storm and the tiny community is thrown into turmoil by the stranger who is so suddenly thrust among them. In the atmosphere of bigotry and suspicion that follows, a terrible tragedy seems inevitable unless Willie can meet his own fears face to face and pit himself against the very elements that haunt his dreams. Will Gatti is head of English at a girls' school in Surrey. He taught for a while at a school in Dublin and lived on the west coast of Ireland for a couple of years, which is where he returns every summer, and where he has set Sea Dance, his first novel for OUP, which is now being reissued in a smaller mass-market paperback format.