The first volume of a visionary historical trilogy from the secret diaries of Captain John Smith, which tells also the life of Sir Francis Drake. The entire trilogy, titled IN THE LAND OF WHISPERS, concerns the first generation of Englishmen in the New World, dating from 1565-1631, and chronicles how the English came to the American shore to found a Utopia, but founded a slave state instead. THE WEIGHT OF SMOKE is published in advance of the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown. The two subsequent volumes will be published in 2007 and 2008.

The Dragons of the Storm continues onward from The Weight of Smoke, the first volume of the In the Land of Whispers trilogy. While the old alchemist and mariner, Jonas Profit, relates the tales of Queen Elizabeth's pirate, Francis Drake -- whose circumnavigation of the world, and sinki ng of the Spanish Armada, enabled the English to envision a colonial empire -- John Smith dedicates the year of his presidency toward form ing a new society with the surviving colonists, until his authority is stripped from him by his enemies, and he is forced to confront the legacies of Drake, Powhatan, and Roanoke.

"The Leaves of Fate" is the third and final volume of an epic fictional chronicle, "In the Land of Whispers." The three books present the extraordinary histories of the hero of Jamestown, Captain John Smith, and the great Elizabethan explorer before him, Sir Francis Drake. Smith's journals record the events of his own life, and reprise the tales told him around the campfires at Jamestown by Jonas Profit, an alchemist who accompanied Drake on his voyages.