National Network for Equitable Library Service

In Deluded Your Sailors, the culture industry is a weapon, a victim, and an opportunity, depending on the perspective of two main figures: the unsteady but perceptive Nichole Wright, whose discovery of crucial documents threatens a government-funded tourism project, and the politely menacing, shape-shifting Reverend Elias Winslow. And in parallel storytelling: an early eighteenth-century girl, daughter of a nameless prostitute, winds up first as object of depraved pleasure, espionage agent and courier, and finally captain of a Salem trading vessel. Her desperately threaded disguise holds until her unacknowledged past crashes into her frail present. Trapped, and finally forced to reveal many things kept hidden, she refuses to be exploited any further. But her defiance exacts a terrible cost.