This is a story about adventure, intrigue, and faith. Robert is a young missionary who is stranded in a seedy port in the East Indies just before 1900. There he faces pirates, unscrupulous and despotic local authorities, crooked European expatriates, conspiracy, and the temptations of the flesh. He fights snake infested jungles, shark infested seas, and an island of dragon-like monsters. Most of all he is tried by the conduct and actions of an older missionary who has compromised his beliefs and sullied his faith. But Robert also encounters a fragilely beautiful girl with whom he falls deeply in love in a bittersweet and doomed romance.
Years earlier, when his parents died he was raised by his Aunt, a good and industrious older lady. She was deeply religious and very much admired her brother and his wife who were missionaries. So she raised Robert to have the singular ambition of becoming a missionary. The death of his elderly aunt only increased his desire to become a foreign missionary in order to fulfill his own ambition and honor the memory of his aunt. But he is rebuffed by the missionary societies because he is not married. Lacking formal religious training and money, he decides to become a medical missionary by apprenticing himself to an older doctor who treats many of the most indigent and poor of the city of Edinburgh. After four years of working under Dr. Simpson, and living with him and his daughter, Marjorie, Robert announces his intention to go to the South Pacific as a medical missionary. Despite having no funding, he is sure that he can be successful, so the day comes when he says goodbye to a sad Dr. Simpson and his tearful daughter.
Our story begins when the ship Robert is travelling on is forced to stop in the bay of a small port in the East Indies more than a thousand miles from Australia’s northern coast. He is talked into going ashore by the ship’s little cockney steward. The ship’s second officer tries to talk him out of it. He should have listened, because in a rundown saloon that the steward lures him into he runs afoul of a pirate named Perigoso. Set adrift in the shark-infested South China Seas by the enraged pirate, he suffers from the burning sun, attacks by sharks, and hunger and thirst. He reaches land weak and desperate and believing that death is imminent. He faces a terrifying night in a jungle filled with venomous snakes, poisonous insects, and fierce and voracious animals. Although he survives those terrors his troubles and the threats to his very existence are only beginning. Come join Robert in his fight against evil men and ravenous monsters in Good and Evil on the Island of Dragons.
