The young Baron Holstein, son of a dissolute bankrupt, strives to restore his family's honour. But will he be able to avoid the distractions of his enemy's daughter and his young stepmother?

The helmsman nodded with his head. "Well, it seems right to me," he murmured, "but the talk with us goes like this, anyone who once belongs to the sea, he must also return to it. The sea lets go of no one."

His bestsellers burnt and his grave desecrated by the Nazis, Georg Julius Leopold Engel (1866-1931) has been unfairly neglected by subsequent generations. A number of his novels were...