Columbia Journalism Review: The Great Exploiter

Five years ago, I was working as a staff writer at the East Hampton Star, a family-owned weekly newspaper on the eastern end of Long Island, New York, when an editor first told me about a great untold story of the so-called Hamptons that I eventually turned into my first nonfiction book. 

In March of 1984, four young commercial fishermen disappeared in a hellacious storm off the coast of Montauk. But much of the real drama, I would discover, unfolded not at sea, but on land. Through each of their survivors, whether friends or family members, the lost men became a lens through which to examine the process of grief and letting go. 

I first met Mary Stedman, the widow of the young captain, in the summer of 2017. We spoke uninterrupted for three hours, followed by dozens of hours in the weeks and months and years thereafter. I’ve always been fascinated by complicated women, and Mary possessed not only a photographic memory but a deep, expansive intellect. As we became better acquainted, she passed along the names of dozens of people who helped fill me in on the man Captain Michael Stedman had been.