The Great Circle

It's 1865, and shipping agents jest that the only passengers booking passage on the paddle steamer Laurentia from Boston to Liverpool are those who don't care how long it takes them to get there--or whether they get there at all. For middle-aged English cotton trader Arthur Crichton, the voyage begins inauspiciously: few of the first class cabins are booked; the captain has a questionable resume; the crew is a gang of ruffians and deserters--and he's seasick. Worse, Crichton has begun to doubt the wisdom of his marriage to 21-year-old Olivia. But he can have no inkling of the voyage in store for him. First the captain enlists his help in introducing the ship's single Negro passenger to the other (often bigoted) first-class passangers. Then the handsome and disturbingly young American John Bonney confesses to Crichton that he is a Union deserter and begs for Crichton's help, meanwhile forming an altogether too-intimate friendship with Olivia. Soon the introspective Crichton finds himself unpleasantly entangled in the life of everyone on board. While nothing is quite what it appears in this leisurely period piece from the Somerset Maugham Award winner, resolutions are predictably symmetrical, very much in the manner of the day. (July)