The year is 1861. Hervé Joncour is a French merchant of silkworms, who
combs the known world for their gemlike eggs. Then circumstances compel
him to travel farther, beyond the edge of the known, to a country
legendary for the quality of its silk and its hostility to foreigners:
Japan.There Joncour meets a woman. They do not touch; they do not even
speak. And he cannot read the note she sends him until he has returned
to his own country. But in the moment he does, Joncour is possessed.