From the opening line, “Captain Ahab was neither my first husband nor my last”, you will know that you are in the hands of a masterful storyteller and in the company of a fascinating woman hero. Inspired by a brief passage in Melville’s “Moby Dick”, where Captain Ahab speaks passionately of his young wife on Nantucket, the tale of Una Spenser’s is compellingly and beautifully told. The daughter of a tyrannical father, Una leaves the violent Kentucky frontier for the peace of a New England lighthouse island, and the love of two young men. Needing to leave the island, she disguises herself as a boy and earns a berth on a whaling ship. There she encounters the power of nature, death, and madness, and gets her first glimpse of Captain Ahab. As Naslund portrays Una’s love for the tragically driven Ahab, she magnificently renders a living, complex marriage in the context of its time and place. Immersed in this world, the reader experiences a brilliantly written, vibrant, uplifting novel.