1799, Dejima in Nagasaki Harbor. Jacob de Zoet, a devout and resourceful young clerk, has a chance encounter with Orito Aibagawa, the disfigured daughter of a samurai doctor and midwife to the city's powerful magistrate. The borders between propriety, profit, and pleasure blur until Jacob finds his vision clouded, one rash promise made and then fatefully broken--the consequences of which will extend beyond Jacob's worst imaginings.

"By 1836 the beaver trade was starting to wind down, and trappers like Zach Connors, known as Grizzly Killer, were having to find other ways to get the supplies they had become accustomed to. Zach had found gold nuggets in a creek in the sacred mountains of their home, which he used to make up for the lack of beaver pelts. The Utes and Shoshone alike believe the gold in the creek was given to Grizzly Killer, but no one was allowed to dig for it. After...