The story
Circling the Sun meets Master and Commander in this emotionally rich historical novel of ambition, secrets, and a marriage forged at the rail of a tall ship.
New York, 1841. Ellen’s the best navigator on the eastern seaboard. But with her father dead, no ship will sign a woman as crew. So she marries her way onto a tea ship instead.
Her captain and new husband is Perk Creesy—the boy she ran wild with in Marblehead, the one man alive who knows the depth of her skills, and the first love she never got over.
The captain commands the ship. She decides where it goes.
Their contract makes them equals as husband and wife, captain and crew on deck. Each is secretly trying to leave their feelings out of it. Both arrangements are tested from day one in the most punishing conditions.
They set out to sail 15,000 miles with a crew convinced she’s bad luck and 130 days to reach Canton or Perk loses his command and Ellen loses the sea forever.
Every right course belongs to him. Every wrong one is hers alone.
Then her numbers stop adding up.
Her celestial and dead reckoning plots put the ship six and a half miles apart. And the man who staked his command on her unerring skills is suddenly the last person she can tell.
A Course to Steer is Book Two of The Navigator Series, a sweeping maritime saga inspired by Eleanor “Ellen” Creesy, the real woman whose navigation of the clipper ship Flying Cloud set a record that stood for 135 years.
