MISTER CHRISTIAN: FURTHER ADVENTURES OF FLETCHER CHRISTIAN, LEGENDARY LEADER OF BOUNTY MUTINY, A NOVEL

A fictional retelling of the story of mutineer Fletcher Christian considers what his life would have been like had he survived the South Pacific uprising and follows his romance with the beautiful Daphne. 20,000 first printing.

Proceeding from the premise that Fletcher Christian, leader of the 1789 mutiny that wrested control of HMS Bounty from tyrannical Captain Bligh, did not subsequently perish on Pitcairn Island, Kinsolving (The Diplomat's Daughter, 1993, etc.) offers an immensely entertaining account of a Georgian/Regency picaro's amazing adventures. Escaping his South Seas refuge by canoe (at age 30) after a native uprising in 1793, Fletcher is picked up by a Dutch merchantman that's later sunk by a French privateer in the Netherlands Antilles. Taken prisoner aboard the pirate ship, he manages to kill the depraved captain, purloin his small pouch of large gems, and save a distressed damsel named Daphne Lewis from an unhappy fate. After spending an idyllic fortnight on a conveniently deserted Caribbean isle, Daphne and Fletcher fall deeply, lustily in love. The wealthy, widowed Daphne (who was on her way from Jamaica to England to marry an impoverished duke) is soon rescued, and Fletcher (still wanted by the British Admiralty) eventually makes it home as well. Although spurned by his family, he keeps the first of many trysts with Daphne. Fletcher is sustained by his abiding passion for her--and the proceeds from sales of the jewels he took from her captor. He serves under assumed names as an able- bodied seaman on British warships in epic battles from Camperdown (in 1797) to Trafalgar (1805). Between naval engagements, he finds time to give Daphne and her impotent peer a much-wanted male heir. Consumption takes Daphne from Fletcher in 1806, and his resultant insanity gets him committed to Bedlam. Five years later, the vengeful Bligh finds him in the madhouse, but the condemned Fletcher is reprieved at the eleventh hour by his own noble son. At the close, the fiddlefooted hero turns from the life of idle ease that could be his and heads back to sea. A grand to-the-ends-of-the-earth romp that, though merry and melancholic by turn, strikes just the right stoically mock-heroic tone throughout. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

YA-Kinsolving's sequel to Charles Nordhuff's Mutiny on the Bounty weaves flashback, documents, autobiography, and traditional narrative styles to create the subsequent history of Fletcher Christian and his turbulent life after leaving Pitcarin Island. Branded as a traitor of world-wide renown, he becomes a fugitive during the dawn of the French Revolution and an unwilling participant in the battle of naval sovereignty between England and France. He is a sympathetic character whose journeys involve the famous political and literary figures of the day. He endures years of wandering and continual impressment, and rediscovers Daphne Lewis, with whom he shared imprisonment on a Dutch privateer, an idyllic island escape, and unknown to him for several decades, a son. Their many tragic separations and Christian's relegation to a life of necessary anonymity fuels the story, and the inevitable and dreaded final confrontation between the two older arch enemies, Christian and Bligh, is resolved with a masterful twist. A memorable story of adventure, love, politics, history, and war marvelously poured and mixed together.
Carol Beall, Immanuel Christian School, Springfield, VA
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Spanning a period of more than 20 years following the 1789 mutiny aboard the HMS Bounty, this captivating yarn chronicles the subsequent derring-do of chief mutineer Fletcher Christian. In 1810, a man languishing in Bedlam, the infamous English insane asylum, claims to be Fletcher Christian, long presumed dead. A progressive doctor allows him to write his story as a form of therapy?and so begins a rousing adventure tale as Fletcher relates how he escaped a native uprising on his South Sea island and returned circuitously to England. En route, he rescues Daphne, a beautiful duchess, from pirates, only to be marooned with her briefly on a Caribbean island. Their love keeps Fletcher returning to England after each flight from authorities, each terrible hardship abroad and forced tour at sea. England and France are fast at war, and impressment into the navy is a constant threat. Fletcher sails as a common seaman into some great battles alongside the likes of Lord Horatio Nelson, and dangerously close to his old nemesis, Captain Bligh. He also contends with pirates and is imprisoned by them for years at a time. While landbound, he is shunned by his family but befriended by his old neighbors, William and Dorothy Wordsworth, who tend to him during an illness?while their friend Samuel Coleridge supplies laudanum and picks Fletcher's brain for details of life at sea. Whenever he can, Fletcher schemes to meet with Daphne, under assumed names and a few steps ahead of a persistent Home Office detective. Kinsolving (The Diplomat's Daughter) maintains a relentless pace through all the period detail, and his clever interstitching of historical fact and wild imagination creates an old-fashioned romantic saga that is both outrageous and credible.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Have you ever wondered what really happened to Fletcher Christian and his mutineers after the mutiny on the Bounty? Kingsolving, author of such best sellers as Bred To Win (LJ 5/1/90) and Born with the Century (LJ 9/1/79), here spins a tale about what might have happened after the mutineers landed on the island of Pitcairn. Instead of being killed in an uprising on the island, Christian escapes to England and falls in love. The star-crossed lovers face a multitude of obstacles in their quest to be together, with Christian being dragged off to battle at every turn and pursued by a suspicious agent from the Home Office. While Christian is a likable character, the story often becomes bogged down in details about the various ships and battles. Kingsolving makes good use of the historical facts of the period, incorporating both Wordsworth and Coleridge into Christian's life. Recommended for large fiction collections and fans of Kingsolving's previous novels.
--Kathy Ingels Helmond, Indianapolis-Marion Cty. P.L.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Sequel-itis continues in the ranks of novelists, signaling a lack of creative new ideas but simultaneously offering intriguing possibilities about the second chapter of literature's greatest characters. In this case, Fletcher Christian escapes from Pitcairn and returns to England despite the mutiny offense hanging over his head. Along the way, he experiences the love of his life, encounters the great poets Wordsworth and Coleridge, fights alongside Lord Nelson, is pursued by a Javert-like detective, and ultimately encounters his archenemy, William Bligh. Kinsolving's prose keeps Christian himself compelling, but some of the war stories become rather routine; and the author falls into one trap of fictionalizing a real person's experiences: having to create an entire fictionalized world of other real people like Nelson so that the encounters between the two seem believable. Overall, this is a genuinely entertaining what-if novel. Joe Collins