A Return to Duty

Book excerpt: A Return to Duty, the eighth volume in the award-winning Cutler Family Chronicles series, is set in Massachusetts and the Far East in the early 1850s during the aftermath of the First Opium War fought between China and Great Britain. The subsequent flood of opium into North America and Europe, from Turkey and the eastern provinces of India through China, threatens the very fabric of America. As a premier carrier of goods along Far Eastern trade routes, Cutler & Sons, in league with the U.S. Navy and the Royal Navy, plays a key role in the struggle to eliminate the scourge of narcotics. Family loyalties, core values, and passions are woven into a plot that takes the reader from Boston to Washington, and from Java to Hong Kong and the Gulf of Tonkin, in a savage conflict with cutthroats and brigands who defy their emperor to amass huge fortunes by ransoming sailors and smuggling opium. The fate of Cutler & Sons and the future of Western civilization hang in the balance.