The Poniard Blade — Anthony Graham

In this sprawling novel of the sea the great voyage of Captain Cook to the Antipodes is imagined with a shipboard cast of unruly characters. A world-wise dwarf, a naïve hero and a Tahitian intellectual mingle with rascally aristocrats and dangerous sailors. The story wends its way from England to Tahiti, from Marseilles to Casablanca and finally to Savannah, Georgia where the startling denouement takes place. It is part adventure yarn, part love story and part satire but most of all it is a celebration of the fortitude of the human spirit. The author uses the technique of speaking to the reader in the voices of several of the main characters. The reader is inexorably pulled into the narratives.