Fireflies is a modern rendering of Moby Dick, with most of the prominent characters and incidents from that work included, though somewhat transformed. Ahab and Ishmael have become two Jewish sisters from Brooklyn: Queequeg, a reformed Harlem drug dealer, and Pip, a deaf Indonesian dancer. Starbuck, Flask, Stubb, and even Bulkington, Feddalah, and Father Mapple are all here to partake in this adventure. But whereas Ahab strikes out in rage at a malevolent cosmos, symbolized by the white whale that crippled him, Maggie's instinct is to channel her wrath at fate's apparent hostility into creating The White Elephant, a "pure" theater in which the vast wisdom of the past might once more flower. Her relentless pursuit brings a dark victory, enabling her to impose her own ephemeral order on one small corner of an otherwise enigmatic universe. As did its famous precursor, this novel ponders those profound questions that so troubled Melville, while affirming once again that the greatest adventure has always been the exploration of the possible.