Tom Henderson Wells's saga of the elegant sailing yacht Wanderer, member of the New York Yacht Club and its clandestine missions in the late 1850s to transport human chattel to the United States is a thrilling narrative, based upon solid fact. On the heels of Bleeding Kansas, the shocking apprehension of the Wanderer, breaking half a century later the 1808 ban on the importation of slaves into the United States came at a time when relations between North and South were raw nerves. The Wanderer's northern origins and apparently elegant role as a yacht belied her real work. Quite by accident she was apprehended on her way to the Georgia coast and the national scandal unfolded, burning through the newspapers all over the United States and, perhaps ironically, feeding the fires of sectional hate.