THE GHOST OF THE MARY CELESTE

Susie Berneis impresses as narrator of Valerie Martin’s excellent work of historical fiction. In 1872, the ship Mary Celeste was discovered adrift off the coast of Africa. The undamaged vessel’s cargo was intact, but there was no sign of a single crew member. Young Arthur Conan Doyle hears of this mystery and writes a fictionalized account. Berneis gives credible voices to bits and pieces from letters, diaries, ship’s logs, court records, and poetry as the story unfolds. Part sea story, part love story, part ghost story, filled with intriguing characters, from the Mary Celeste’s captain, Benjamin Briggs and his wife, to Violet Petra, a spiritualist medium, to Phoebe Grant, the tabloid journalist who hopes to expose Violet as a fraud. Berneis moves seamlessly between time periods and human emotions. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine [Published: FEBRUARY 2014]