This is the fourth of Longstreet's novels in the Liberty Tree Series even though their debt to history seems very slim, and this one's moored to the early Clipper Ship trade out of Nantucket and is the presumptive diary of Ira Barraclough. Full of spit and 'baccy juice and kind of ""feisty"" in spots, it follows Ira's experiences (he's the son of a raunchy individualist who builds the first Clipper Ship, the Flying Star) offshore with an experienced married woman, then aboard with the young-old Katie de Haas Jehangir, a Chinese girl, a widow and mother at fifteen. There's not too much story really--ending with a skirmish against Chinese pirates, ""yellery swine,"" before Ira leaves his father and his Flying Star to go and live in the Orient with Katie. Longstreet's almost self-perpetuating prose moves this along to its by now sartin destination--cf. earlier books in this series, but as early Americana they're strictly reproduction.