Julia Ashley was born to a life of dramatic twists and tragedy. Saved from Cromwell's Irish massacres by her nurse, saved from starvation by a Dutch sea captain... Her future and any possible lasting happiness depended entirely on a 'glove marriage' to a man who was no more than a name.

The Dutch East Indies, in the seventeenth century, were lands of legendary riches; of 'nutmeg princes;' of fortunes and family empires built on barbaric plantations and slavery. And amid the extravagance, the cruelty, the bizarre customs, perhaps the strangest events of all were the curious weddings that sent girls half-way around the world to husbands they had never seen.

Julia, brave and stoical with a stormy and turbulent history behind her, took her 'glove'-of yellow, pearl-sewn silk-and began the journey to the island of Rua, to a land of seeming paradise where
nothing was exactly as it appeared.