It is 1861. Tom Wells is in pursuit of a girl from North Carolina. He accepts an offer from his employer to leave the quiet obscurity of his job as an office boy in a London shipping firm to cross the Atlantic to Nassau in the Bahamas. Now he must face the hazards of the Union blockade of the Confederate ports in the American Civil War. Tom’s bravado may help him with the dangers of running the blockade, but how will he cope with the conflicting issues of love, loyalty and morality as he becomes entangled with a lady of easy virtue in Nassau?
Tom’s adventures take him through the perilous triangle between Nassau, Charleston and Wilmington NC, where he must smuggle arms and munitions through a gauntlet of Union warships to the Southern ports, bringing cotton and tobacco back to Nassau. Blockade running steamships were sleek and fast, but they were frequently captured or sunk by their pursuers. As the pace of the Civil War quickens, so the dangers increase. Tom’s tangled love triangle heightens the tension.
The novel is fast paced and dynamic, exploring a fascinating, dramatic and less well known corner of that extraordinary conflict – the American Civil War. The characters are finely drawn, with the balance between deceit and morality offset by courage and humour. The story is exciting, intriguing and well written. The reader becomes totally absorbed in the rich interplay between the characters and the thrill of the action. The realism and historical accuracy of the background complete the picture.
As the Civil War reaches its climax, so does the drama in Tom’s love life, heightened by the historical events within which he is embroiled.