(Archway Publishing) Twenty-one-year-old New Yorker Richard Starr arrives in China in 1857 only to discover it is very different from the China of his dreams. Instead, he must navigate through a country embroiled in the Opium Wars, ravaged by the Taiping Rebellion, and accosted by crippling corruption. The novel is based on the life of Dana’s great-grandfather. Dana is a veteran of the Marine Corps and a retired lawyer.