Ballou’s story-paper romance follows Will Ratlin, a captain the British officers on the African coast know as a slaver, through an Atlantic gale, a shipwreck, an English country estate called Bramble Park and a tense courtroom confrontation, with the quadroon of the subtitle bound up in his fate. Its editor’s preface insists the tale takes no side on slavery.
A brisk mid-century sea yarn from the publisher of The Flag of Our Union; its handling of slavery and race reflects the 1850s. Download the free EPUB.