THERE IS A THIN LINE BETWEEN GENIUS AND MADNESS.

When young Nathan sails with his older brothers in search of a lost treasure ship, he is expected to do exactly as they tell him. But when one of his brothers mysteriously dies and the other declares he is Captain Ahab straight out of Moby Dick, Nathan worries about what orders he might have to carry out.

Then a mysterious object appears in the bay that seems to have floated out of the very pages of Moby Dick. Something very strange is happening at sea, but how...and why?

"Figures and events from Moby Dick are given eerie, shadowy counterparts...So quietly, so persuasively is this accomplished that when Ishmael's ocean-going coffin drifts out of Melville's seas in O'Dell's, it carries no shock for either Nathan or the reader." —Washington Post Book World