1806: The United States faces an existential threat from within. Vice President Aaron Burr, feeling cheated of the presidency, conspires to destroy the Union - and if he can't become president legally, to set himself up as the leader of a breakaway republic in the West. At the same time, President Jefferson's plan to outlaw the Atlantic slave trade provokes a secessionist movement in the Southern states. Mere decades after achieving independence from Great Britain, the young nation is in serious danger of falling apart.

To further complicate matters, a French fleet escapes the British naval blockade and heads westward across the Atlantic. Onboard is Emperor Napoleon's younger brother, Jerome, intent on exploiting America's internal divisions to his and his country's advantage.

And in their wake, on a mission to assist the beleaguered President Jefferson, is the newly promoted commodore Nathan Peake with a small squadron of British warships led by the seventy-four-gun Scipio.

Nathan has his own problems to contend with, however, and at times they appear overwhelming. They include his pregnant lover who is under suspicion of being a French agent, his secretive and complicated association with the Bonaparte family, his own dissident officers, the pro-slavery faction in the British Navy, and an American double agent intent on exploiting the national crisis for his own personal gain.

The scene is set for an epic clash among the British Navy, Napoleonic France, and the forces driving America apart. And as the 1806 Battle of the Atlantic reaches the mouth of the Chesapeake, the Eastern Seaboard is about to be hit by one of the worst hurricanes in history.