From award-winning author Julie Gerstenblatt, an epic tale of adventure on the high seas, a spunky stowaway, and a family confronting the past to secure their future.
Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from The Stargazer of Nantucket by Julie Gerstenblatt, which released June 9th 2026.
Massachusetts, 1851
Winifred Starbuck wants only one thing: to join her parents on their final merchant voyage–from Nantucket Island to bustling San Francisco, then across the glittering Pacific to the distant ports of China. Yet renowned trade captains Nell and Peter Starbuck have forbidden their daughter from coming aboard on the adventure of a lifetime. So Winnie does what any strong-willed eighteen-year-old would do: she stows away.
Once the ship sets sail, Winnie is plunged into turbulent waters, treachery, and the thrill of life on the high seas. As she drifts farther from shore, and closer to fabled Canton port, she uncovers a long-buried secret–one that reveals the truth behind her parents’ desperate fear. And as she continues to chart her own course, she’ll have to plumb the depths of her courage to take on a world far bigger–and more dangerous–than she ever imagined.
EXCERPT
Prologue
Aboard the Shooting Star
May 18, 1838
This is the story of a mother, a father, a daughter, and a ship.
The ship set sail from Nantucket and navigated the seas in search of fortune. The husband captained the vessel with skill and speed. In China, the merchant wife purchased tea and silk and porcelain and carpets and furniture and more and more tea to sell in America for incredible profits.
When they departed from the harbor at Canton, the mother, the father, and the daughter were happy. The father had shown off his beautiful ship and family to the other sea captains and China merchants. The mother had found a superior supplier for ginger and had procured the lowest price for the freshest tea of the season. The daughter, having just that very day turned from four fingers old to five—a whole hand! So big!—was happy because she was on an adventure with her parents. She was happy because she was always happy at sea.
The ship, too, was happy, weighed down as she was with rare and prized commodities from the far side of the world, her sails filled with wind, the American flag proudly waving from her stern. While spending several months in port as the merchant wife bartered and made her deals, the ship had been caulked and tarred and mended, her sails repaired and her hull tended to by the captain husband and his crew. Together, they had survived typhoons, hurricanes, and the doldrums. Together, they would head home.
Only, sometimes, a happy story gets interrupted. Sometimes, even on a happy ship, a sailor goes mad, losing his mind from a potent combination of drink and opium and isolation, and it drives him to a deranged act.
“Get me off this ship!” the madman cried, his eyes bloodshot and face hollow in the moonlight.
It was a calm and balmy night. The ship had recently passed Sumatra and was charting its course through the Java Sea. After dinner, the mother, father, and daughter had joined the crew of thirty men for a bonfire on the deck. There had been revelry, with the redheaded steward teaching the golden-haired daughter yet another shanty, and the daughter telling a spooky ghost tale, delighting the crew more than frightening them with her lisp and her innocent emerald eyes.
A sailor with wild black hair and a tiny black dog danced a jig, and the girl and her mother danced with them. Her father played the fiddle.
And then the madman had demanded to disembark. “Now!” he said, and, “I must go now!” and, when the redheaded steward and the cook named Cook and even the nasty third mate who nobody liked tried to subdue the sailor and lock him in the brig, he fended off their grasp and pulled a knife from his sleeve. “Now, you bastards, now!”
As the crew decided what to do to rid themselves of this madman—head back to Jakarta? Push on to Bali? Let him go adrift in a lifeboat?—the crazed sailor grabbed hold of the daughter and disappeared into the belly of the ship, the girl’s screams echoing through the night.
The madman jiggered open the iron lock on the door of the ship’s hold using the tip of his knife and slipped inside. He dropped the daughter to the hay-covered floor and barricaded them in with crates of potatoes, bags of flour and grain, and a giant wooden desk commissioned especially for the governor of Massachusetts. “Be quiet!” he yelled at the daughter. “Stop crying!”
But now he wanted to cry, too, confused and maniacal as he was. He inhaled and exhaled deeply, trying to make his addled mind think. For what had he gotten himself into? Locked in the hold with the captain’s little girl? It would be the death of him.
There were shouts from the hallway outside, attempts to break down the door. The girl’s cries turned to whimpers. She crawled away on hands and knees and the mad sailor lost sight of her in the dark room.
No matter. What he needed now was a gun. Ammunition. Feeling his way with his hands, he began to search for the right crate. He knew the captain kept a cache of weapons here, should the ship ever be attacked by pirates or mutineers. Was he a mutineer? No, he wasn’t trying to take over control of the ship. He just wanted to leave. But maybe, by causing this chaos, he was indeed a mutineer? He would save that question for another time. Ah! He found it. The crate with munitions. Although he couldn’t read, he had helped load this crate onto the ship many months ago and recognized the black markings on top.
Hiding behind some wooden chests on the other side of the room, the daughter started to hum, the tune of the new shanty fresh in her mind, the humming soothing. It wasn’t one of her mother’s lullabies, but it would have to do. Her song echoed through the high-ceilinged chamber, bouncing off the crates of exported tea and exotic fruits, elaborately carved lacquered furniture and beautiful, hand-woven textiles. The Chinese goods hid the daughter from view and further confounded the madman.
“Stop your singing, child!” the madman yelled.
And the daughter did stop singing. But not because she wished to obey him. Rather, because, through the hatched skylight above, she could see her mother looking down at her, a lantern in her hand. Mother! she almost called out. But her mother pressed her pointer finger to her lips. Shhhhhh.
Shhhhh, the girl pantomimed back.
Stay put, the mother mouthed, her palm out flat. Don’t move.
The daughter nodded. She would stay put. She wouldn’t move. She would listen to her mother.
And then, someone broke a small hole in the wall using a wooden beam like a battering ram. The madman loaded a bullet into the pistol and cocked the handle. Maybe he could beat this. Maybe he could be free.
But it was a small hole, only big enough for a tiny dog to jump through. The man laughed as the pup yipped away and tried to bite his ankles. From the other side of the wall, the men kept striking the wood until the hole enlarged enough for one man to snake his way in and rush toward the madman.
The madman shot at the sailor, the one with the wild black hair, the owner of the annoyingly yippy pup, but his aim was off, and he ended up shooting the sailor in the leg.
The sailor fell to the floor and groaned, bleeding.
“Open the door for us, you lucky sonofabitch!” another sailor shouted to the injured crewmember.
The sailor crawled toward the door, removing the barricade as quickly as possible so that his mates could enter and end this.
Knowing that a swarm of sailors would arrive any moment, the madman tried to grab more bullets, but his hands were shaking badly and he ended up dropping the gun. He dashed to the other side of the room and slid into a corner behind a case of kumquats, almost bumping into the little girl.
Now the daughter was unsure what to do. Stay put? Listen to her mother, even still?
And then, from above, another sound: the hatch with its grated skylight was yanked from its metal hinges. Both the madman and the daughter looked up.
“Mama!” the girl cheered, reverting back to the babyish name she had called her mother before turning five fingers old.
“My darling,” the mother said, jumping onto a stack of crates piled high. She stepped down and reached out her arms.
But before the two could embrace, the madman stepped between them and once again procured his knife. He wasn’t so mad as to kill the child, no. But kill the mother? Why not.
The mother, having so very much to live for, would not die tonight. She reached into the right-hand pocket of her beautiful, fine silk dress, pulled out a small pistol, and shot the madman in the heart.
Did the mother, the father, the daughter, and the ship live happily ever after?
You’ll have to read on to find out.
