America seen through the eyes of the huddled masses. The hero is Estaban, one of a group of Central Americans brought to New York to crew a tramp ship, only to be abandoned by the ship's owners. When their food runs out Estaban, a former Nicaraguan guerrilla, goes ashore to steal for them. His forays lead him to a Latino neighborhood where he finds work and love. By the author of The Long Night of the White Chickens.

In this acclaimed novel, the Pulitzer Prize–finalist explores the perils, passions, and adventures of a young Nicaraguan immigrant trapped in Brooklyn. Named a Best Book of the Year by Newsday, the Los Angeles Times Book Review, the Chicago Tribune, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and Publishers Weekly In the late 1980s, teenage Sandinista soldier and avowed communist Esteban Gaitán leaves Nicaragua to begin a new life in America. He soon arrives on a desolate Brooklyn pier with fourteen other men to form the crew of the ship Urus. Elias and Mark, the owners of the Urus, hold the men captive, forcing them to work in a vain attempt to make the rotting vessel seaworthy. Without the means to return home, Esteban remains a virtual prisoner, haunted by the loss of the woman he loved during the war. Eventually learning how to sneak off the ship, he makes nocturnal forays into Brooklyn, where he meets a Mexican immigrant named Joaquina, and begins to plot his permanent escape. Centering his novel around Esteban, but also telling the stories of his fellow landlocked sailors, Francisco Goldman proves once again that he is “a major talent of great style and soul” (The Miami Herald). “Often very funny . . . Here, a corner of Brooklyn becomes the exotic and foreign experience, and through Esteban’s eyes it is as mysterious and alluring as Tangiers.” —The Dallas Morning News

William Robinson, whose pseudonym may well have been his lower-deck nickname, volunteered for naval service in May 1805. This was in itself unusual by this time, but, rather more true to form, he eventually deserted in 1811. However, in his six years as an ordinary seaman he saw much action, including fighting at Trafalgar in the 74-gun Revenge - and less gloriously at the controversial Basque Roads attack, and the disastrous invasion of Walcheren in 1809. His experiences were probably typical of a Channel Fleet sailor of those years, and Robinson's descriptions are particularly valuable because, while he was an intelligent observer, he never became embittered by the harsh conditions, so his account is balanced and credible.

A brilliant telling of the history of the common seaman in the age of sail, and his role in Britain’s trade, exploration, and warfare British maritime history in the age of sail is full of the deeds of officers like Nelson but has given little voice to plain, "illiterate" seamen. Now Stephen Taylor draws on published and unpublished memoirs, letters, and naval records, including court-martials and petitions, to present these men in their own words. In this exhilarating account, ordinary seamen are far from the hapless sufferers of the press gangs. Proud and spirited, learned in their own fashion, with robust opinions and the courage to challenge overweening authority, they stand out from their less adventurous compatriots. Taylor demonstrates how the sailor was the engine of British prosperity and expansion up to the Industrial Revolution. From exploring the South Seas with Cook to establishing the East India Company as a global corporation, from the sea battles that made Britain a superpower to the crisis of the 1797 mutinies, these "sons of the waves" held the nation’s destiny in their calloused hands.