From the Back Cover:
Japan, 1704. In an elegant mansion a young woman named Tsuruhime lies on her deathbed, attended by her nurse. Smallpox pustules cover her face. Incense burns, to banish the evil spirits of disease. After Tsuruhime takes her last breath, the old woman watching from the doorway says, “Who’s going to tell the Shogun his daughter is dead?”
The death of the Shogun's daughter has immediate consequences on his regime. There will be no grandchild to leave the kingdom. Faced with his own mortality and beset by troubles caused by the recent earthquake, he names as his heir Yoshisato, the seventeen-year-old son he only recently discovered was his. Until five months ago, Yoshisato was raised as the illegitimate son of Yanagisawa, the shogun's favorite advisor. Yanagisawa is also the longtime enemy of Sano Ichiro.
Sano doubts that Yoshisato is really the Shogun's son, believing it's more likely a power-play by Yanagisawa. When Sano learns that Tsuruhime's death may have been a murder, he sets off on a dangerous investigation that leads to more death and destruction as he struggles to keep his pregnant wife, Reiko, and his son safe. Instead, he and his family become the accused. And this time, they may not survive the day.
My Thoughts:
I've been trying to broaden my reading selections a bit this year, stepping out of the realms of American and European historical fiction to check out some books that I might not have normally picked up off a shelf. I was really intrigued by the description of
The Shogun's Daughter and decided to give it a try. The story delves right into mystery and intrigue as the shogun's only legitimate child, his grown daughter, Tsuruhime, dies a gruesome death from smallpox at the same time a scheming member of the shogun's court, Yanagisawa, is attempting to pass his own son off as the shogun's long-lost heir. Doubts and questions swirl through the palace compound, and none more so than in the mind of Sano, the shogun's trusted councilor and top investigator, whose deeply ingrained sense of honor will not allow him to let the falsehoods he suspects go unchallenged, even if it causes a fall from grace and places his family in danger. Tasked with uncovering a plot to murder Tsuruhime by none other than the shogun's wife, Sano walks a dangerous line between rival court factions while uncovering a deeper conspiracy that could topple the empire and cost him and his family their lives.
