The Rising Sun

It is the end of the seventeenth century, and the Rising Sun, the biggest of a five-ship flotilla, is making the perilous trip to Darien on the northern coast of Panama. With it go all the hopes and fears of the Scottish people who, driven at last to defiance of their jealous and powerful neighbour, wholeheartedly throw themselves into the scramble for empire and trade, the quest for untold riches and the discovery of a promised land. The journey is chronicled by one Roderick Mackenzie, an ambitious, cunning but naive young Scot. Through his journal the reader embarks upon a voyage of physical discovery, but more engrossing still is the journey Roderick makes into the depths of men's souls, not least his own, as the essence of civilization is tested to its utmost ...