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Bright and distant shores : a novel
Format:
Book
Title:
Bright and distant shores : a novel
ISBN:
9781439198865
Edition:
1st Washington Square Press trade pbk. ed.
Publication Information:
New York : Washington Square Press, 2011.
Physical Description:
470 pages : map ; 21 cm
Contents:
"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 the 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." -- Inside cover.
Summary:
Chicago, 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.
Holds: