The eight-year-old son of Chamberlain Sano mysteriously vanishes. Sano discovers that Lord Matsudaira, his political rival, has had the boy kidnapped and sent to the northern frontier island of Japan known as Ezogashima (Hokkaido). Something is rotten there: Communications between Ezogashima and the capital have broken down. Sano and his wife Reiko travel to Ezogashima to rescue their son and find themselves caught up in big trouble that involves the murder of a woman who belonged to the native Ainu people, a samurai warlord gone dangerously mad, and escalating racial conflict between the Ainu and the Japanese. Sano and Reiko must solve the murder if they want to escape Ezogashima alive. Это и многое другое вы найдете в книге The Snow Empress (Laura Joh Rowland)