Traveler's Tree Book

Somewhere in the Caribbean Sea the French ship Entremetteuse lies stranded without a breeze, its crew racked by starvation and disease, its wood rotting, and its masts limp. An island and the dim outline of the fabled traveler's tree appear on the horizon. Although only a gunshot away, the island's sheer cliffs and coral reefs make it cruelly unreachable. The heat grows unbearable, the ship's stores are nearly depleted, and the rats eagerly await the remains. As listless as the ship and increasingly feeble with scurvy, the embattled crew dispatches one longboat after another against raging waves, barrier reefs, and poisonous fish in order to reach the island, but to no avail. As mutiny, rebellion, and utter starvation loom, they pin their last hopes on a direct charge of the ship across the reefs, in one last valiant effort to reach the traveler's tree...

This latest volume in The New Press International Fiction series introduces an important author to the English-speaking world. Bontempelli tells the tale of a French ship stranded without a breeze, its crew wracked by starvation. Suddenly the fabled traveler's tree appears--but reefs make it cruelly unreachable. The crew makes one last, valiant effort to save itself.