A Ship Called Grace — Douglas Berry (1)

This is a story of conflict and adventure, pitting the secular triad of money, lust, and power against the religious trinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. It is a religious/historical novel that concerns the slave trade in the Eighteen-thirties with the building of a slave ship in a small, coastal village in Nova Scotia, Canada. It includes a Methodist religious revival; a stormy sea voyage by a youth in a small sailing craft, an African trek capturing slaves, a slave ship caught in the doldrums in the South Atlantic, and, later, shipwrecked in a hurricane off of the coast of Haiti, a Voodoo ceremony; the attempted destruction of the new ship; andof coursea love story. The new ship, named Grace, is owned by a New England sea captain and his nephew, who believe they live in a state of grace in which their sins have been forgiven before they are committed (Rom. 8: 1). The youth goes to Africa with the captain after being saved in the Methodist camp meeting, and is confronted with justifying his newly found faith with the injustices he finds in the slave trade.