It's danger on the high seas for the Barnetts, but will it come from the authorities, Mother Nature or family Flood?
In Wisconsin six years ago, Ursula Barnett was duped into defrauding her local church of thousands. The statue of limitations is inching nearer, and the police are circling in. Panicked, Ursula books herself and her American family passage on a budget centennial Titanic cruise, hoping to ride out the investigation and embark a woman redeemed.
But lurking amongst the leaky walls of the Queen of Crabs is a danger worse than bad food, hip-hop nightclubs and terrifying onshore excursions: her Irish family, still resentful of the Barnett's lottery win years earlier. Sister-in-law Fionnuala Flood, knowing Ursula is a sitting duck for the next twelve days, rallies the family to retaliate, stopping at nothing to drag lady of leisure Ursula back down into the gutter that is their own life. The Queen of Crabs, though, is not Derry, Northern Ireland, but an alien battlefield, where the Barnetts and Floods find more enemies lurking outside the family than within.
Fleeing The Jurisdiction is equal parts Titanic, Love Boat and Voyage of the Damned, a darkly comic story of family relationships, the politics of envy, the injustices of social inequality and, perhaps, some personal redemption. And a sighting of Rod Stewart playing shuffleboard?