After inadvertently offending the President, captain Stephen Rensselaer is placed in command of the ship Athena and directed to the Middle East, where war has broken out. When religious terrorists violently seize control of a nearby cruise ship, Rensselaer and his crew bravely defy protocol and battle the terrorists. Mark Helprin successfully galvanizes the reader's moral outrage in the service of a powerful emotional payoff. He writes with a lyricism that borders on the otherworldly.