At the end of the 19th century, Mark Twain, wife, Livy, and Clara, one of his daughters, traveled around the world for a year. Twain was on a lecture tour, and his experiences were later captured in Following the Equator. One hundred years later, Paul Joseph spent an academic sabbatical in New Zealand while also traveling in Fiji, Australia, and Indonesia with his wife, Linda, and three children, Ian, Sara, and Danny. Drawing upon Twain's notebooks and letters, his children's journals, intense experiences, contrasting sets of photographs, cross-cultural encounters, and a quirky sense of humor, Precious Cargo compares the geographic and emotional journeys of the two families as they move through the same places a century apart.