The Rising Sun Author:Douglas Galbraith *A tour de force of historical fiction* 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, wholeh... more »eartedly throw themselves into the scramble for empire and trade, the quest for untold riches and the discovery of a promised land. The narrator is Roderick Mackenzie, a young Scot of ambition, cunning - and naivity. Having secured for himself a place aboard the Rising Sun, he becomes the expeditions self-appointed chronicler - a task that turns out to be very different to the one that he had anticipated, as optimism turns to despair, comradeship to rivalry, and the brave colonial life to a long and heartbreaking struggle with rain, mud and disease.« less