The Navigator

Inspired by the true story of an American legend

Circling the Sun meets Master and Commander in this emotionally rich historical novel of ambition, second chances, and the woman destined to set the ocean on fire.

Marblehead, 1841. 26-year-old Ellen can chart a course better than any man twice her age. Raised on her father's schooner, she spent years guiding his ship past every ledge and tide-rip of the Eastern Seaboard, certain the sea would always be hers. Then her father dies, and the only life she was built for runs hard aground.

No ship will sign a woman. Nothing waits ashore but a soul-crushing marriage to a cabbage farmer and a lifetime of watching the tide go out without her. Until the harbor delivers the last man she expected to see again—Josiah Perkins Creesy. Perk, her childhood ally, now captain of a tea ship in desperate need of a navigator.

He can give her back the sea only as his wife.

A loveless match to a stranger, Ellen might have borne. But Perk is neither stranger nor safe—the childhood love she betrayed with a single lie, the one man alive who knows exactly who she is, and the one she's never quite managed to stop wanting. Binding herself to him is another matter entirely.

The sea would belong to her again, but she would forever belong to him.

From the narrow lanes of Marblehead to the cutthroat wharves of New York, Ellen must decide how much of herself she's willing to lose—and how much she's brave enough to risk—to become the woman she was born to be.

The Navigator is the first book of The Navigator Series, a sweeping maritime saga inspired by Eleanor "Ellen" Creesy, the real woman whose navigation of the clipper ship Flying Cloud set a record that stood for 135 years. For readers of Paula McLain, Marie Benedict, and Kate Quinn.