In 1753, the Liberty Merchant, a slave ship bound for Jamaica, tossed 83 Africans overboard on the pretext of illness and insufficient water available for them. In reality, the ship owner hoped for an insurance settlement for his loss of "property." Years later, this event becomes the subject of a court case in which the owner's son, set on avenging his father's lost fortune and eventual suicide, runs the mutinous crew to ground in the Florida Everglades and returns them to England for trial. In this pursuit, he is conflicted by a growing attachment to Jane Ashton, whose brother Frederick, an ardent abolitionist, is on the other side of this case, and he is equally distracted by his pending acquisition of a coal mine in which he plans to introduce new methods of efficiency for increased productivity and profits. Recalling the Amistad and the song "Amazing Grace," Unsworth's finely crafted plot brings together a vivid cast of seamen, miners, and landowners at a moment in history when crimes of property were considered more serious than crimes against persons and a more enlightened future lay just around the corner.
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