Book Four, The Jam Maker, is set in 1841 in Paita, a whaling town on the northern Peruvian coast. English writer, Herman Melville, seeks a woman of enormous historical import in the South America of Gran Colombia. Manuela Saenz is living out her last years in this whaling town, selling jams and writing love letters for illiterate sailors. Former lover of the Liberator, Simon Bolivar, she is now a long way from the wild years of revolution and glory. Reviled and poor, she is reluctant to revive memories of times with the greatest love of her life, even for an Englishman who is willing to pay for the stories.