"Written with a force and clarity that marches it along at a magnificent pace, and packed with honest suspense and excitement, [this] is a full-bodied novel about three generations of vigorous and vital people."

Based in the fictitious town of Dinton Port, Massachusetts in 1950, this story is about whaling Captain Enoch Adams. A book had been written about him which became a classic in American literature. Some believed the book didn't tell the whole story about Captain Adams. A young man found some long-lost letters written by Adams' daughter in a second-hand bookstore in Manhattan. They started him on a quest for the truth about the legendary captain that led him to the seaport town, home of three generations of the Adams family.This man, Hartwell, "learned a momentous truth: that the Adams story provided a new vision of the whole New England story, of which the old conflict between passion and puritanism was only a part."