From the award-winning author of The Mercury Visions of Louis Daguerre and The Beautiful Miscellaneous comes a sweeping historical novel set amid the skyscrapers of 1890s Chicago and the far-flung islands of the South Pacific. With critical praise lavished on his first two novels, Dominic Smith has become a celebrated and revered novelist in the US. Now it's time for Australia to acknowledge its own brilliant stroryteller. Bright and Distant Shores, Smith's latest novel is a stunning exploration of late-19th-century America and the tribal Pacific, an epic journey that fans of historical fiction will never forget. In the waning years of the 19th century there was a widespread hunger for tribal artifacts, spawning collecting voyages from major museums and private collectors around the globe. In 1897, one such collector, a Chicago insurance magnate, sponsors an expedition into the South Seas to commemorate the completion of his company's new skyscraper-the world's tallest building. The ship is to bring back an array of Melanesian weaponry and handicrafts, but also several natives related by blood. The magnate's vision is to create a tribal village as an exhibition on the rooftop of his historic skyscraper, thus making it a magnet for tourists and voyeurs. Caught up in this scheme are two orphans-Owen Graves, an itinerant trader from Chicago's South Side who has recently proposed to the girl he must leave behind, and Argus Niu, a mission houseboy in the New Hebrides who longs to be reunited with his sister. At the cusp of the twentieth century, the expedition forces a collision course between the tribal and the civilized, between two young men plagued by their respective and haunting pasts. An epic and ambitious story that brings to mind E. L. Doctorow, with echoes of Melville, Peter Carey and Robert Louis Stevenson, Bright and Distant Shores is a wondrous achievement by a writer known for creating compelling fiction from the fabric of history. Praise for Dominic Smith's The Beautiful Miscellaneous: 'Fantastic...an utterly fresh look at how a child can grow beyond parental expectations and find the genius of being himself.' -People (four stars) 'A touching, gracefully wrought novel.' - Boston Globe 'This unusual, gorgeously written novel is filled with pleasures.' -Booklist
