Star of the Sea

Star of the Sea follows the Star of the Sea, a crowded, disease-ridden ship carrying refugees of the Irish Famine from Ireland to New York during the brutal winter of 1847. The novel is narrated largely through the notebooks of G. Grantley Dixon, an American journalist aboard the ship, who interweaves his own account with reportage, letters, and other documents gathered from his fellow passengers.

Among those on board are the bankrupt Anglo-Irish landlord Lord David Merridith, his wife Laura, their children, and a mysterious, disfigured steerage passenger named Pius Mulvey, who is being stalked through the ship's decks by a hired killer. A former servant, Mary Duane, ties several of the passengers' pasts together in ways that only emerge gradually.

As the ship crosses the Atlantic, the narrative moves backward and forward in time, exposing the land agreements, betrayals, and famine-era cruelties that bound these passengers together in Ireland before any of them boarded. The novel is both a mystery — someone aboard is a killer — and a broader account of the famine's human cost.