Silver Chair Bookstore

Wolfe's very fine new novel is the story of the two lives of Father Christopher, a Catholic priest in the contemporary world and a successful pirate on the Spanish Main three centuries earlier. As always, Wolfe has done his homework, as the roster of famous pirates to whom the book is dedicated immediately indicates. Piratical Christopher certainly takes advantage of his chosen career to free himself of many of the restrictions of his era, though he did also take a wife and father a child, both of whom he lost in his passage to the future. At the end of a superlatively well-done sea story, the modern-day priest is looking for a way back to his original self, to his family, and to the treasure that, however ill-gotten, he regards as his. Fans of fantasy, of Wolfe, and of sea stories should all beat paths to anywhere this yarn is on the shelf.