Bright and Distant ShoresBright and Distant Shores
a Novel
Title rated 3.55 out of 5 stars, based on 9 ratings(9 ratings)
Book, 2011
Current format, Book, 2011, 1st Washington Square Press trade pbk. ed, All copies in use.Book, 2011
Current format, Book, 2011, 1st Washington Square Press trade pbk. ed, All copies in use. Offered in 0 more formatsChicago, 1897. An obsessive collector and insurance magnate commissions the world's tallest building. Determined to compete with Marshall Field's recent donation of $1 million to found the Field Museum, the tycoon funds a private collecting voyage into the Pacific.
When a Chicago insurance magnate sponsors a South Seas expedition to collect various Melanesian artifacts, his schemes ensnare two orphans including a recently engaged itinerant trader and a mission houseboy who longs to be reunited with his sister.
When a late-19th-century Chicago insurance magnate sponsors a South Seas expedition to collect various Melanesian artifacts, his schemes ensnare two orphans including a recently engaged itinerant trader and a mission houseboy who longs to be reunited with his sister. By the award-winning author of The Beautiful Miscellaneous. Original.
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Last Painting of Sara de Vos comes a sweeping historical novel set amid the skyscrapers of 1890s Chicago and the far-flung islands of the South Pacific.
In the waning years of the nineteenth century there was a hunger for tribal artifacts, spawning collecting voyages from museums and collectors around the globe. In 1897, one such collector, a Chicago insurance magnate, sponsors an expedition into the South Seas to commemorate the completion of his company's new skyscraper'the world's tallest building. The ship is to bring back an array of Melanesian weaponry and handicrafts, but also several natives related by blood.
Caught up in this scheme are two orphans'Owen Graves, an itinerant trader from Chicago's South Side who has recently proposed to the girl he must leave behind, and Argus Niu, a mission houseboy in the New Hebrides who longs to be reunited with his sister. At the cusp of the twentieth century, the expedition forces a collision course between the tribal and the civilized, between two young men plagued by their respective and haunting pasts.
An epic and ambitious story that brings to mind E.L. Doctorow, with echoes of Melville and Robert Louis Stevenson, Bright and Distant Shores is a wondrous achievement by a writer known for creating compelling fiction from the fabric of history.
When a Chicago insurance magnate sponsors a South Seas expedition to collect various Melanesian artifacts, his schemes ensnare two orphans including a recently engaged itinerant trader and a mission houseboy who longs to be reunited with his sister.
When a late-19th-century Chicago insurance magnate sponsors a South Seas expedition to collect various Melanesian artifacts, his schemes ensnare two orphans including a recently engaged itinerant trader and a mission houseboy who longs to be reunited with his sister. By the award-winning author of The Beautiful Miscellaneous. Original.
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Last Painting of Sara de Vos comes a sweeping historical novel set amid the skyscrapers of 1890s Chicago and the far-flung islands of the South Pacific.
In the waning years of the nineteenth century there was a hunger for tribal artifacts, spawning collecting voyages from museums and collectors around the globe. In 1897, one such collector, a Chicago insurance magnate, sponsors an expedition into the South Seas to commemorate the completion of his company's new skyscraper'the world's tallest building. The ship is to bring back an array of Melanesian weaponry and handicrafts, but also several natives related by blood.
Caught up in this scheme are two orphans'Owen Graves, an itinerant trader from Chicago's South Side who has recently proposed to the girl he must leave behind, and Argus Niu, a mission houseboy in the New Hebrides who longs to be reunited with his sister. At the cusp of the twentieth century, the expedition forces a collision course between the tribal and the civilized, between two young men plagued by their respective and haunting pasts.
An epic and ambitious story that brings to mind E.L. Doctorow, with echoes of Melville and Robert Louis Stevenson, Bright and Distant Shores is a wondrous achievement by a writer known for creating compelling fiction from the fabric of history.
Title availability
Find this title on
College of San Mateo LibrariesAbout
Details
Publication
- New York : Washington Square Press, 2011.
Opinion
More from the community
Community lists featuring this title
There are no community lists featuring this title
Community contributions
There are no quotations from this title
There are no quotations from this title
From the community