Signals of Distress

November 1836. A fierce gale beaches an American sail ship off the English coast injuring an African slave below decks and eventually disgorging 300 head of cattle and rowdy American sailors into a hardscrabble fishing village. The same storm drives into port a steamer bearing one Aymer Smith the foolish well-intentioned prig who will deprive the town of its livelihood free the African slave and set into motion a whole series of unforeseeable tragicomic events. One of the most seductive and surprising novelist at work today once again creates a richly strange and believable world uncannily familiar to our own.