Publisher's Synopsis
The Japans: A World he could not understand; A Gift he could not refuse; A Promise he could not keep; A Battle he could never win."Dejima: That cursed island is more of a prison than a trading post."1851: The world is at the cusp of a great industrial revolution. Newlywed Hendrik de Wolfe accepts a two-year assignment with the Dutch East India Company on the small solitary island of Dejima in the far-off Japans, a nation suspended in the middle-ages for over two centuries by the Tokugawa Shogunate's "Closed Country" policy of Sakoku. He finds an impenetrable realm beyond his understanding, and as pirates, "Black Ships", and the military might of the "Great Western Powers" besiege the secluded Land of the Rising Sun, the Hollander struggles to maintain the Dutch monopoly and Japan's isolation. The clouded future lies through a veil of infidelity, death, honor and duty.
