Author Description

Escaping a ship's mutiny with his stowaway daughter Rosamund, seventeenth century horticulturalist Edward Popple is cast ashore on an uncharted island in the Indian Ocean. The island, with its sands, rock pools, and solitaire birds, seems to Edward to be a paradisal laboratory. There he can concentrate on scientific discovery and breeding the elusive black rose, as well as have his daughter, whom he adores seemingly beyond the proper boundaries of a father, to himself. But they soon discover the island has other refugees: namely Lou-Lu, a Chinese eunuch, marooned on a mission to Rome with his charge Taizao, an impotent princeling and claimant to the throne of China. They have a rare yellow rose and a ship, and negotiations begin: the Chinese need the Europeans' navigational skills, and desire Popple's daughter, and Popple needs the ship and desires the rose of the Chinese.