Summary: It is 1841, the height of America’s Golden Age of Whaling and the waning days of the rule of the Shogunate in Japan, which has been closed to foreigners for 250 years. In G.L. Tysk‘s novel “The Sea-God at Sunrise,” a young Japanese fisherman named Shima, and his younger brother Takao, are out on a routine fishing expedition when a freak typhoon hits. They wind up shipwrecked on an uninhabited island. Their rescue by a passing American whaling ship proves a short-lived miracle. They are barred from reentering Japan, as the ship heads for the whaling grounds of the South Pacific. Shima becomes an unwilling passenger in a strange floating world filled with foreign faces, a new language, and a hostile chief mate. But when the reclusive captain suddenly falls ill, Shima and third mate Daniel Ellis stumble upon a secret from his past that brings together their previously isolated worlds. Inspired by the true story of John Manjiro, one of the first Japanese in America and later interpreter to the shogun, “The Sea-God at Sunrise” is a tale of friendship and forgiveness across two cultures at the height of America’s Golden Age of Whaling. More below the media player. [...] The post Shipwrecked. Rescued. Forever Changed. appeared first on The Bookcast.
