In Antebellum New England, a boy born to Irish immigrant parents will grow up to be a whaler without peer, but as he marries and sires a child of his own, dark secrets flow in on the tides. As Scrimshaw moves from Massachusetts to Civil War Virginia and California to World War I Europe, it lays bare the births and deaths, hopes and fears, and promises and betrayals of three generations of Americans. Covering over a century in American history, Scrimshaw...