The Narwhal has a simple mission: to find the remains-human and material-of a disappeared ship. But its rash and obsessive young commander, Zeke Voorhees, has ulterior motives that may spell doom for the Narwhal and its crew. His soon-to-be brother-in-law, scholar-naturalist Erasmus Darwin Wells, may be the only one aboard who can alter their fate. Back in Philadelphia, the women left behind make journeys of the imagination as they await the Narwhal's return. Wielding her signature lyrical and precise style, Andrea Barrett unravels the mid-nineteenth-century American romance with the Arctic in a "genuine page turner that long lingers in the mind" (Philip Graham, Chicago Tribune).