Anyone who has lived as long as I have, and who has done the things I have, knows there will come a reckoning. Uprooted from her Shanghai childhood, young Cassandra is sent with her father and twin brother to live on the Black Isle. A teeming British colony in the Indonesian archipelago, the Isle is a seaport haunted by a restive multitude of ghosts ghosts that Cassandra can see. These spirits will face off against the forces of modernity, drawing Cassandra into the center of a turbulent struggle. Through it all, her strength and perseverance will be put to the test, as she endures the hope and heartache of an impossible love, even while she grows into a powerful figure of the Isle's transformation from colonial backwater to bustling cosmopolitan city. Taking readers from the 1920's to the present day, from the Japanese occupation during World War II to the booming post-war period and the radical transformations of the 20th century, this is a visionary and moving epic.