New Novel ‘Xerxes’ Pairs an Engineer’s Eye for Detail with a Family Separated in a South Carolina Hurricane

Balle Balle Radio™ Entertainment Desk

Richard Kapp has published a new novel, "Xerxes: The Engineer, The Hurricane, and The Boy," built around a family vacation on a South Carolina barrier island that turns into a survival story when a hurricane forces an evacuation and a young boy named Robbie is left behind.

The book is Kapp’s latest work through Covenant Books, a Christian publishing house based in Greenville, South Carolina. According to the announcement, the novel follows the family through the chaos of the storm and into what the publisher describes as a longer reckoning with loss and recovery, tracing how the separation reshapes each character afterward.

Kapp brings a specific professional background to the material. He holds degrees in architecture and civil engineering from Clemson University and has spent more than fifty years working as a practicing structural engineer and business owner, according to the announcement. That technical grounding, Kapp said, was central to how he approached the hurricane itself. "Writing this story allowed me to combine my passion for engineering and my love for the South Carolina beaches," he said, adding that he wanted the technical detail of the storm to sit alongside what he called a profoundly human emotional core. The announcement notes that his family’s ties across multiple Southern states also shaped the book’s regional texture.

The novel is positioned by the publisher as a story about family, loss and resilience, framed around the question of how ordinary people hold together, or don’t, when extraordinary circumstances intervene. "Xerxes" is available through bookstores and major online retailers, including Amazon, Apple Books, Google Play and Barnes & Noble.

Disaster narratives built around a single family’s separation during a hurricane are a familiar structure in regional fiction, but Kapp’s engineering background is the detail that sets this one apart on paper — whether the technical authenticity he describes actually distinguishes the book from others in the genre is something only readers who pick it up will be able to judge.

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