The Rising Sun: A Novel - Hardcover

Evocative of the cadences of Herman Melville, Galbraith's impressive historical fiction debut charts the voyage of The Rising Sun and its four sister ships setting out from Scotland in 1698 intent on establishing a colony in Darien, later known as Panama. The colonists' mission, envisioned and orchestrated by William Paterson, founder of the Bank of England and trader of dubious background, is to secure a stronghold abroad, allowing the Scots to compete economically with the English, Spanish and Dutch. Ostensibly the journal recollections of the ship's superintendent of cargoes, Roderick Mackenzie, the meticulously detailed, briskly narrated tale proceeds beyond potentially dry recitations of the number of hammock hooks and cordage on board to often poetic reveries about the amount of sail needed to "blow a nation's hopes half way across the world and over its insane edge." This so-called Darien Scheme failed, but Galbraith brings it all to vivid, absorbing life--whether he is describing the ravages of yellow fever or the oozing thickets of jungle the men must clear with machetes. With a sure and often comic hand, Galbraith engages the reader with characters like the self-absorbed, opportunistic Paterson; Mackenzie's dull-witted assistant, Mister Shipp; or Mackenzie himself, a young man who matures quickly via hardship and hard living. Although details of weather and diet occasionally slow the pace, Galbraith redeems himself in moments of poignant humanity: "I drank his health, drank it again and then just drank." Some observations approach the Melvillean mode, as when the colonists, reduced for long periods to eating nothing but biscuits and green beef, feast on creamy whale blubber and a "gluttonous hush settles over the colony." Though long, this swift tale is never long-winded.

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Roderick Mackenzie is a young superintendent of cargoes for a small fleet of exploratory ships sailing out of Edinburgh in 1698. While he is much more comfortable with numbers than he is with action and intrigue, his role in the expedition will quickly acquaint him with both of the latter. The ships set sail to establish a colony at Darien in Central America, and disaster strikes immediately as one craft is mysteriously lost within a fog bank. This misadventure strikes the tone for the rest of the voyage. The colonists find that they are as ill equipped to deal with each other as they are with the harsh environment and strange diseases of the New World. The colony is doomed from the start, but Roderick eventually thrives and finds fulfillment in the quest. With his debut, Galbraith presents a captivating view of Scotland's failed effort to become an empire, as well as a great adventure story. Eric Robbins
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