For God and Gold immerses readers in the turbulent world of Elizabethan England, following Jasper Festing, a young Puritan scholar reeling from his father's death. When circumstance draws him into the orbit of Sir Francis Drake, Festing is swept from the quiet halls of scholarship into the dangerous currents of exploration, religious persecution, and imperial ambition. Corbett, a distinguished naval historian writing at the height of the British Empire's confidence, transforms his exhaustive knowledge of the era into a vivid portrait of an age when faith and gold drove men to extraordinary heights and terrible depths. The novel captures the collision between Protestant earnestness and Elizabethan excess, between the contemplative life and the brutal reality of empire-building. What emerges is both an adventure story and a thoughtful meditation on how religious conviction fares in a world of political calculation and mercenary hunger.
