Sabina Murray grew up in Australia and the Philippines and is currently a member of the MFA faculty at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is the author of Tales of the New World, A Carnivore’s Inquiry, Forgery, and The Caprices, which won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. Following her New York Times Editor’s Choice collection of short stories Tales of the New World, historical fiction master Sabina Murray returns with an epic novel set across four continents and a 40-year time span Valiant Gentlemen: A Novel (Grove Press) reimagines the lives and friendships of humanitarian and Irish patriot Roger Casement; his closest friend, Herbert Ward; and Ward’s wife, the Argentinian-American heiress Sarita Sanford. Valiant Gentlemen takes the reader on an intimate journey, from Ward and Casement’s misadventurous youth in the Congo—where, among other things, they bore witness to an Irish whiskey heir’s taste for cannibalism—to Ward’s marriage to Sarita and their family life in France, to Casement’s covert homosexuality and nomadic lifestyle floating between his work across the African continent and involvement in Irish politics. Valiant Gentlemen is a uniquely human account of some of early 20th century’s larger historical figures from a “ravishing” (O magazine) and “brilliant” (Boston Globe) voice in fiction today.