THE STRANGE VOYAGE OF NEPTUNE'S CAR

Lasker has dug up a likely historical adventure on which he bases this story of how in 1856 Mary Patten, nineteen and pregnant, commands the clipper ship Neptune's Car on its voyage around Cape Horn from New York to San Francisco. It is Mary's second voyage with her sea captain husband; fortunately, on the first he had taught her navigation, so that now when he falls ill and the negligent first mate is locked in the brig, Mary alone is capable of taking the ship to port. As a narrator Lasker has a disconcerting way of breaking off at the turn of the page in what would seem to be mid-episode--but then the voyage too was a choppy one. And Lasker's green-washed drawings give it a sense of stormy desperation.