Dark water

Longlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction'Eloquent, impressive . . . while her touch is witty, her manner almost buoyant, her themes are sinister beyond belief.

She touches the frontiers of the human' Hilary Mantel Boston, 1833Aboard the USS Orbis as it embarks from Boston and surges south to round Cape Horn, Hiram Carver takes up his first position as ship's doctor.

Callow and anxious among the seasoned sailors, he struggles in this brutal floating world until he meets William Borden. Borden. The Hero of the Providence. A legend among sailors, his presence hypnotizes Carver, even before he hears the man's story.

Years before, Borden saved several men from mutiny and led them in a dinghy across the Pacific to safety. Every ship faces terror from the deep. What happens on the Orbis binds Carver and Borden together forever.

When Carver recovers, and takes up a role at Boston's Asylum for the Insane, he will meet Borden again - broken, starving, overwhelmed by the madness that has shadowed him ever since he sailed on the Providence. Carver devotes himself to Borden's cure, sure it depends on drawing out the truth about that terrible voyage.

But though he raises up monsters, they will not rest.

So Carver must return once more to the edge of the sea and confront the man - and the myth - that lie in dark water. Elizabeth Lowry's gothic masterpiece, like Golden Hill and The Essex Serpent, gives the historical novel a new, beating heart.

In Carver and Borden, she realizes the dichotomy of savagery and reason, of man and monster, of life and sacrifice, in a tale rich with adventure and glorious imagination.