The Sea is My Brother is a novel by the American author Jack Kerouac. The novel was written in 1942 and remained unpublished throughout Kerouac's lifetime due to his dissatisfaction with the novel. The plot and its characters are based on Kerouac's brief experience in United States Merchant Marine during World War II.
In 1942, Kerouac served just eight days in the US Merchant Marine, but his brief service nonetheless inspired him to write The Sea Is My Brother. The author, who was 20 years old when the novel was written, allegedly thought that the book was “a crock [of shit] as literature”, and apparently did not bother to shop it around to publishers. While the novel is not the same as the great work Kerouac produced later in his life, it illuminates Kerouac's early development as a writer.
