By Kien Nguyen

In 1773, three men board a ship bound for Annam – the exotic land in South China that is now known as Vietnam. Led by a charismatic prelate, they embark on a mission to convert the land’s primative heathens to Christianity. But what they discover in Annam is not just the peasants and rice paddies they expected, but a culture more sophisticated more violently unstable then they imagined. Their dreams of colonial glory disintegrate quickly as the men are embroiled in civil war and overwhelmed by floods, famine, and other catastrophes.