Sam says: "Several Februaries ago, I read a newspaper story about a rustbucket freighter that had run itself aground on New York's Coney Island beach, and discharged a swarm of illegal immigrants into the freezing surf. It had taken them three months to travel from the South China Sea. Conditions on board had been bad. But it was hard to find out just how bad, because the immigrants had either vanished into New York or been repatriated. So I decided that I had to write a novel about life on a ship full of illegal immigrants. The research for this book took me into meetings with pirate-hunters in the Sulu Sea, conferences in the boardroooms of Hong Kong and all the way across the Pacific in a rustbucket freighter." "Llewellyn's writing is clean, flowing, unaffected, sometimes with a touch of poetry… may he sail on and on" New York Times
