It is the year 1860, and Japan is at last being forced out of age-old isolation. A feudal warrior state of exquisite culture and barbaric savagery. Where forces gather to threaten the Shogun — and a new Emperor challenges the samurai. Captain Ralph Freeman, US officer on the run, can find no other refuge but this alien land. Alison Gray, victim of shipwreck, must endure years of bondage and sexual humiliation. And both face a fearful struggle for survival as a proud nation is torn apart by bloody civil war.
Christopher Robin Nicole was born on 7 December 1930 in Georgetown, British Guiana (now Guyana), where he was raised. He is the son of Jean Dorothy (Logan) and Jack Nicole, a police officer, both Scottish. He studied at Queen's College in Guyana and at Harrison College in Barbados. He was a fellow at the Canadian Bankers Association and a clerk for the Royal Bank of Canada in Georgetown and Nassau from 1947 to 1956. In 1957, he moved to Guernsey, Channel Islands, United Kingdom, where he currently lives, but he also has a domicile in Spain.
On 31 March 1951, he married his first wife, Jean Regina Amelia Barnett, with whom he had two sons, Bruce and Jack, and two daughters, Julie and Ursula, they divorced. On 8 May 1982 he married for the second time with fellow writer Diana Bachmann.
As a romantic and passionate of history, Nicole has been published since 1957, when he published a book about West Indian Cricket. He published his first novel in 1959 with his first stories set in his native Caribbean. Later he wrote many historical novels set mostly in tumultuous periods like World War I, World War II and the Cold War, and depict places in Europe, Asia and Africa. He also wrote classic romance novels. He specialized in Series and Sagas, and continues to write into the 21st century with no intention of retiring.
This one, I started to read and it was too much sword fighting but it’s about Samurai and their training. Eventually, it gets into more of a love story and I like it more. I find his novels interesting with historical fiction.
This book is amazing. I have read it about 5 times repeatedly. It's a love story with hope and passion, and betrayal and suspense and you'll learn a lot about the early Japan culture, the ways of the Samurai, Mikado, Shogunate, ronin, eta etc.