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THE ABDUCTION OF SMITH AND SMITH by Rashad Harrison

THE ABDUCTION OF SMITH AND SMITH

by Rashad Harrison

Pub Date: Jan. 6th, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4516-2578-3
Publisher: Atria

Harrison’s (Our Man in the Dark, 2011) new historical fiction explores family and freedom, rage and revenge in the melting pot of post–Civil War San Francisco.

Jupiter Smith left Col. Smith’s plantation to fight for the Union. The colonel raged, but he didn’t stop Jupiter. Jupiter was his slave, yes, but he was also his son, a connection Harrison slowly and elegantly reveals. What follows touches on themes from The Odyssey, Jack London’s Sea Wolf and Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. At war’s end, Jupiter returns to the plantation seeking his wife, Sonya, and child. Instead, he finds the colonel descended into syphilitic madness and Sonya gone west. Thinking it an act of mercy, Jupiter kills the colonel and sets out for San Francisco. There he takes work "crimping"—shanghaiing men and selling them to ship captains. Jupiter can't find Sonya right away, but Archer Smith, the colonel’s son, finds him, seeking vengeance. However, war-wounded Archer’s addicted to opium, easily acquired along the embarcadero. Harrison’s clever with descriptions, capable of sketching a character with a quick sentence—"Large ears and head, beady eyes and too many teeth, he looked like the product of royal incest"—and his deftly plotted historical novel quickly becomes an around-the-world adventure. Sonya and young son Jacob are told Jupiter has traveled to Liberia, so they set out for Africa. Jupiter and Archer are themselves crimped and sold to Capt. Barrett, a China-bound gun-runner able to "slip through any blockade like a shadow." Jupiter, Archer and Barrett are soon marooned on Tikopia Island, prisoners of the Kurtz-like Yerby, one of a plethora of characters in San Francisco, China, Cuba and finally Liberia who color the narrative, a motley cast ever conniving to betray, cheat or kill one another. 

A historical adventure that ends with a stunning revelation.