Cloud of Sparrows

Japan, 1861. Lord Genji, the young head of the Okumichi clan, has inherited a troubling gift: visions of events that have not yet occurred. As the Tokugawa order weakens under foreign pressure, he dreams that an outsider will save his life. The prediction appears connected to a small party of American missionaries newly arrived in Edo, including Emily Gibson, who hopes to build a church, and Matthew Stark, a gunfighter carrying a private purpose of his own.

Genji’s decision to protect the missionaries places them inside a struggle between rival domains and competing visions of Japan’s future. Pursued on the journey to the Okumichi stronghold known as the Cloud of Sparrows, he relies on the geisha Heiko, his formidable swordsman uncle Shigeru and allies whose motives are not always clear. The novel combines samurai warfare, political conspiracy and cultural confrontation as Japanese and American characters attempt to understand one another before Genji’s enemies can destroy them.