Sor Lucrezia di Marchionni, a Florentine nun, leads a mission to Hayti, Spain's first American colony, two decades after its 'discovery' by Christopher Columbus. But she also has a secret assignment - to find out if the passage through to Asia depicted on a world map published by the German cartographer Martin WaldseemUller actually exists. On the island, she meets up with Fray Hugo de Montenegro, a Dominican monk who has been there for several years and has been collecting accounts of Spanish atrocities. Their investigations bring them into contact with TaIno freedom fighters and their...