From one of Australia's most acclaimed authors, a dazzling and deeply
imagined exploration of ambition, natural marvels, and scientific
discovery, and one of history's most significant crises of faith. As a
boy of thirteen, Syms Covington leaves his home in Bedford and goes to
sea, passing into manhood as he sails the world, surveying Patagonia,
and losing his virginity in the Pampas. Aboard the HMS Beagle, he enters
the service of Charles Darwin as an energetic and precocious
fifteen-year-old, and in the course of their voyages together he shoots
and collects hundreds of specimens for his "gent," specimens that become
fundamental to the formulation of Darwin's theory of evolution. Now a
crusty, eccentric, near-deaf old man, Covington has settled in Australia
and is awaiting the arrival of the first copy of On the Origin of
Species. Beset by guilt over participating in a work that will shake
the human worldview to its foundations, he nonetheless wonders what part
of himself might be reflected in Darwin's oeuvre. Mr. Darwin's Shooter
captures its time with rare and dazzling skill, evoking an
unforgettable--but forgotten--man at a watershed moment in history.