Wonderful historical-intellectual-theological-scientific romp. Chloe Bathurst, actress turned zookeeper, must raise funds to rescue her father from penury. She sets her sights on the £10,000 prize offered by the libertine Shelley Society for the first person to succesfull prove or disprove the existence of God. Appropriating the work of her employer, one Charles Darwin, she sets sail with her brother and a conflicted reverend to collect specimens from the Galapagos Islands to prove her purloined theory of natural selection, while a rival expedition sets out to search for the remains of Noah's Ark on Mount Ararat. Tempests and shipwreck follow, and a voyage up the Amazon and over the Andes, racing a ship full of convicts under orders to massacre all the lizards and birds and turtles of the Islands. Adventure a-plenty, and a great deal for the brain to chew on while enjoying the pastiche-Victorian stylings and the indefatigable character of our heroine and her motley collection of followers and devotees.