About the book…
Summer 1856. Nineteen-year-old Mary Ann Patten and her husband, Joshua, are young and ambitious. Both from New England seafaring families, they have already completed their first global voyage with Joshua as captain. Their dream of building a home and a family is almost within reach, but the price of that freedom is one last dangerous transit – a high-stakes race to deliver supplies to the other side of the country. And there is no alternative but to sail all the way around.
Yet as their ship leaves New York, navigating towards the jagged coastline of South America, Joshua falls sick, confined to his bunk and delirious. The treacherous first mate is imprisoned in the brig for insubordination. With no obvious option for a new captain, Mary Ann steps up to take the helm. Within days, she has put down a mutiny. Now she must attempt to steer this 216-foot ship, laden with the modern equivalent of $11 million of cargo, through Drake’s Passage and around Cape Horn – the most treacherous waters in the world.
