The boat on which Edna Ferber based her famous novel brought excitement and entertainment to isolated small towns up and down the East Coast in early twentieth-century America. The builder of the boat, James E. Adams, was a farmer from Michigan who taught himself to be a circus aerialist, started and prospered with his own carnival company, and, when retirement proved boring, decided to build a showboat. The book traces the history of the James Adams from its inception until its demise twenty-seven years later, a tale that includes fires, sinkings, a shooting, arrests, and several deaths.

"Papa Toussaint," a novel based on history, chronicles the efforts of the former slave, Toussaint Louverture, to create in Haiti a nation based on the equality of all races. The colonial countries work to inflame racial tensions on the island, and finally Napoleon sends an army to reestablish slavery.