THE SEA OF LOST SONS

A debut YA historical novel spins a tale out of Treasure Island and reveals the horrors of the North Atlantic slave trade.

What happened when Jim Hawkins left the Admiral Benbow Inn for Treasure Island? Well, his mother needed to hire someone to replace him, of course. That replacement is Jonah, a twice-orphaned stable boy. Jonah is shrewd enough to realize that the local maritime economy is built, in no small part, on the slave trade: “I must say that most people ignored the vice of slavery, living as they did away from the city of Bristol; they benefitted from the extra trade it brought. But it was hard to ignore some of the tales of misery of enslaved human beings.” When Mrs. Hawkins is forced to shutter the Benbow, Jonah goes to Bristol to search for work. It isn’t long before he’s ensnared by a press gang and forced aboard the Black Prince on its way to the coast of Africa. Quite without meaning to, Jonah becomes a crew member on one of those slave ships he’s heard so many horror stories about. Jonah soon witnesses the practice firsthand and is disgusted by the brutality with which slaves are captured and treated. The Black Prince makes its way to the Indies for the purpose of selling its ill-gotten cargo, but the crew runs into that same problem that plagued Jim back home: pirates. Jonah finds himself a guest of Sir Bartholomew “Black Bart” Roberts of the Royal Fortune, where things are run a little differently than they are aboard the slave ship. Jonah befriends the vessel’s surgeon, Peter Scudamore, and finally has a pirate adventure of his own.

Gulick excels in replicating the language and rhythms of Robert Louis Stevenson’s source material, leading readers to believe they are truly enjoying a narrative penned in 1883 (or even the 1720s) that presents Jonah’s point of view: “Wet and stinking, red with embarrassment, I was surrounded by seasoned crewmen relishing the initiation of a raw boy who did not know the basic difference between an upwind that would throw something back to you and a downwind that would take it away.” The author works in the best tradition of parallel novels, exploring those areas of society that the original work skirted but that are of great interest to a modern readership. The slave trade sections are nightmarish and yet they fit somehow seamlessly with the rest of the book. In a sense, such horrors are more easily understood because the author portrays them in their historical and cultural context: Men who are willing to impress teenagers and resort to piracy are, unsurprisingly, quite believable slavers. The story does not scratch quite the same adventuresome itch as Stevenson’s tale, but as a travelogue of the time period, it is thoroughly satisfying. Gulick’s work is a reconstruction not only of a vanished age, but also of a vanished perspective that manages to feel, remarkably, like something new.

An immersive and technically stunning companion to a Robert Louis Stevenson classic.