The hard-fought Anglo-American War of 1812 has ended and in its bitter aftermath, the merchant adventurer Matthew Milburn, born English but forced by circumstances to become an American, is desperately trying to repair his fortunes.
But fate is against him. A chance remark at a Governor's reception makes an enemy out of the influential Commander Anthony Craig. Fleeing from Craig, Matthew runs into the first flaring of a slave uprising among the plantations of the Bahamas.
It needs only the challenge of the treacherous agitator de Gonaives, a Haitian bent on driving the British from the Bahamas, to involve Matthew and his crew in a desperate struggle to save an entrancing young girl and her family from a terrible fate.
And this beautiful haven is about to become a cold-blooded death trap.
Written against the sultry background of early 19th-century Caribbean, this is the fourth novel in the continuing story of Matthew and Son, the Savannah shippers.