This article: The novel begins in England during the Age of Enlightenment but long before the days of Darwin and the Slavery Abolition Act 1833. The novel is broken into two books, beginning in 1752 and 1753 and ending in 1765, with a decade or so separating the two. Matthew Paris is a central character in the novel, a physician several years older than his cousin Erasmus. Prior to the beginning of the story Paris had been imprisoned for writings on the age of the earth that clashed with a literal interpretation of the Bible, his wife Ruth dying while he was incarcerated. Wishing to escape his past, he accepts a position as surgeon on the Liverpool Merchant, a slave ship built and owned by his uncle William Kemp. The elder Kemp's son, Erasmus Kemp, a young man in his early twenties, has a long-standing hatred for his cousin dating back to his younger years. He participates in a play initially, and is enamored with seventeen-year-old Sarah Wolpert, the daughter of a friend of his father. The ship's crew is made up of men available at the time around the Liverpool docks, and many are recruited by blackmail and deception. As the ship sets off toward the African continent to collect its cargo, it becomes clear that Paris and the ship's captain, Saul Thurso, have very different world views. contains an answer for the question: Who is Erasmus' cousin married to?, what is it ?
The answer to this question is:
Ruth