Edward Walters

After Englishman John Blackthorne is lost at sea, he awakens in a place few Europeans know of and even fewer have seen—Nippon. Thrust into the closed society that is seventeenth-century Japan, a land where the line between life and death is razor-thin, Blackthorne must negotiate not only a foreign people, with unknown customs and language, but also his own definitions of morality, truth, and freedom. As internal political strife and a clash of cultures lead to seemingly inevitable conflict, Blackthorne’s loyalty and strength of character are tested by both passion and loss.

In our lifetimes, most of us endure a number of relationships in which we struggle to define the time spent there. In each, we search to find connections to call our own, but silently as we reluctantly resist our forthcomings, so do the individuals we “commit” ourselves too. When - and if - that connection becomes disturbed or disconnected altogether, what transpires next?