The Shallow Seas: A Tale of Two Towns, Singapore and Batavia

In Volume 2 of The Straits Quartet, Charlotte Macleod is nineteen, pregnant, and alone in 1842. She is fleeing a scandalous liaison with her married Chinese lover, a liaison which would bring ruin on him, herself, and her brother, Robert, Singapore's Chief of Police. When Tigran Manouk, forty, and the richest merchant in Batavia, capital of the Dutch East Indies, asks for her hand in marriage, the choice is no choice. Through loss and pain, Charlotte will find a way to make a life with a ma...