THE SEA IS RED

In 1861 when the novel begins, Kirk Britt is a trader in Port-au-Prince. At the end of the book several years later he is still a trader at the same stand but with a new bride and an incredible series of adventures to look back upon. A slave revolt forced Kirk and his wife to flee Haiti for New Orleans where misinformation from an evil Spanish slave dealer leads them into the guns of a Federal ship which blows up Kirk's vessel and kills his wife. Although he hates slavery, Britt signs aboard a confederate raider and travels the seven seas sinking Yankee ships, quelling West Indian revolts, spying, intriguing and finally bringing about the ruin of the wicked Spaniard. He re-establishes his business and finds a new wife. Long on action and coincidence, short on credibility, this novel presents a facet of the Civil War that has the merits of being novel if little else.