Sea of poppies / Ghosh, Amitav

Preparing to fight China's nineteenth-century Opium Wars, a motley assortment of sailors and passengers establish family-like ties that eventually span continents, races, and generations.

The "Ibis," embarks on a journey from Calcutta with a diverse crew of sailors--which includes a bankrupt raja, a widowed tribeswoman, a Mulatto American freedman, and a French orphan--to the poppy fields in Ganges, to China's nineteenth-century Opium War.