Will José be drawn into the dangerous life of a smuggler? Or settle down to a quiet life in his father’s shop in Havana?

In 1760 Cuba, José Albañez, a free boy of color, resents his charming but unprincipled uncle Domingo’s pressure to join him to sea on one of his smuggling ventures. He would rather continue his studies at the Jesuit school and then follow his father into the joiner’s trade.

Instead, he finds himself struggling to master seamanship, lodging with a Jewish trading family on Jamaica in the aftermath of a slave revolt, and confronting kidnappers on Saint-Domingue. The arrival of a British fleet off of Cuba in 1762 forces him to decide where his future lies.