The Dragons of the Storm (Vol. 2 of In the Land of Whispers)
Clothbound, sewn, jacketed, 349 pages,6 x 9", 2007, 978-0-929701-81-3
Volume Two of the epic novel In the Land of Whispers
"The Dragons of the Storm is as enthralling as The Weight of Smoke. I think John Smith and Francis Drake would rejoice in George Minkoff's lively re-creation of them." — Edmund Sears Morgan
The Dragons of the Storm continues on directly from The Weight of Smoke. When Powhatan forcibly adopted Captain John Smith into his tribe, he declared that after three wounds the river would speak to him. While fishing in the Chesapeake toward the end of a long expedition, Smith is stabbed by a stingray and falls deathly ill. Because he is set to assume the presidency of Jamestown on their return, the fate of the colony may depend upon his recovery. The old alchemist and mariner, Jonas Profit, doctors this second wound, and to ease Smith's suffering starts to tell of the daring circumnavigation of the world by Francis Drake. So begins the second volume of George Robert Minkoff's visionary epic, In the Land of Whispers, revealing the desperate events in the lives of both Drake and Smith that will lead finally to a permanent settlement for the Elizabethans in the New World. John Smith is followed from the initiations of the first volume into a year of unforseen trials and their consequence. While the London Company's aristocrats broker the colony's fate with their wealth and power, the colonists struggle an ocean away merely to survive in an unforgiving land. Famine, contagion, mutiny, and war with Powhatan threaten constantly. And the one man who might save Jamestown from itself, John Smith, will have to confront not only the venality of his enemies, and the legacy of his spiritual fathers, but also the mysteries of his destiny.