It’s been twenty one years since John Bridger vanished without trace from the Roanoke colony off the coast of Virginia, along with 114 other countrymen, women and children. But his son Martin has never given up hope of finding his father. So when Martin receives the secret papers of someone intimately involved with his father’s disappearance – papers that suggest that it was sabotage and not ill-luck brought the colony to its knees – he’s now given more reason than ever to believe his father might still be alive.
Following a string of tantalising clues, each more perplexing than the last, Martin moves through the crowded, stinking streets of Jacobean London, through a world of religious separatists, cutthroat businessmen and Sir Walter Raleigh himself, before the trail leads him across the Atlantic to the New World and the newly founded Jamestown colony.
Once in America, Martin finds himself up against forces and agendas much more powerful than his own – the Catholic Spanish, hostile native tribes, the starving and dissembling settlers, even the Virginia Company itself – who will literally stop at nothing to keep Martin from the truth.