The Whiteness of the Whale
A Novel
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
An antiwhaling expedition to the freezing Antarctic takes a violent turn in this powerful novel from bestselling author and sailor David Poyer.
After a tragic accident maims her laboratory assistant, Dr. Sara Pollard's career as a primate behaviorist lies in ruins. With nothing left to lose, Pollard – descendant of a Nantucket captain whose ship was sunk by a rogue whale – accepts an offer to join anti-whaling activists on a round-the-world racing yacht as the resident scientist. The plan is to sail from Argentina to the stormy Antarctic Sea. There they'll shadow, harass, and expose the Japanese fleet, which continues to kill and process endangered whales in internationally-declared sanctuaries.
But everyone aboard Black Anemone has a secret, or something to live down. Her crew—including a beautiful but narcissistic film celebrity, an Afghan War veteran in search of the buzz of combat, and an enigmatic, obsessive captain—will confront hostile whalers, brutal weather, dangerous ice, near-mutiny, and romantic conflict. But no one aboard is prepared for what Nature herself has in store . . . when they're targeted by a massive creature with a murderous agenda of its own.
Filled with violence, beauty, and magical evocations of life in the most remote waters on Earth, The Whiteness of the Whale is a powerful adventure by a master novelist.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
With an obvious nod to Herman Melville and Moby Dick, Poyer, whose many previous nautically themed novels include The Weapon, tells a riveting modern-day tale of high-seas Antarctic adventure. Fleeing professional disgrace, Dr. Sara Pollard joins the antiwhaling activists aboard the Black Anemone, a high-tech yacht owned by rich philanthropist Jules-Louis Vergeigne and sponsored by the Greenpeace-like Cetacean Protection League. The members of the crew, which includes hard-bitten Captain Dru Perrault and movie star Tehiyah Doree, come from different backgrounds and have varied motives, while Sara feels uncomfortable with their mission of harassing a Japanese whaling fleet in the vast Southern Ocean. The crew battles snow, ice, frigid temperatures, storms, and each other before encountering the whalers in the midst of slaughtering hundreds of whales. The appearance of a mysterious rogue whale, however, introduces an even more deadly hazard than the crew's human enemies. Poyer's intense, fast-paced prose creates palpable suspense as he vividly describes the miserable close quarters, the terrifying sea and weather conditions, and the gruesome, wasteful destruction of the sea's largest mammals.