Desperate in Saint Martin

This book on Guillaume Coppier (1606 - 1674), the early 17th-century French traveler, indentured servant, colonist, mariner, moralist, baroque chronicler, antiquarian, humanist, sometime pirate and slaver of sorts, is essentially a reading of Coppier, the man and his chronicle. Coppier's Histoire et voyage des Indes Occidentales, et de plusieurs autres regions maritimes, & esloignees (History and Voyage to the West Indies and to Several Other Maritime and Faraway Regions) was published in Lyon in 1645. Given its objective and context, this effort-part amateur historiography and translation and part novice commentary and interpretation-is also a survey of past appraisals of Coppier's chronicle. Like all such endeavors, this essay informs on the essayist; it is a sort of voyage, and a long one at that."