In the second half of the eighteenth century, Brazil's gold boom has begun to slow, thrusting Rio de Janeiro into economic difficulties, while Napoleon's rise to power wreaks havoc on all of Europe, causing 15,000 Portuguese citizens, including the king, queen, and their massive court, to seek safety in Brazil.
Joana, one of the many who have fled Portugal, falls in love and marries Mario, the capable son of a troubled Jewish woman, and they give birth to Camila, a spirited, willful girl whose unsettled life mirrors the extremes experienced by her home city.
Influenced by her immoral uncle, Gaspar, the sexually precocious Camila embraces a carnal lifestyle that will haunt her throughout her life. Despite spending time as a nun, then owning and operating an orphanage, she cannot seem to curb her appetites, and her behavior leads to the death of an innocent man and the births of many illegitimate children.
Rio barrels toward independence, led by Emperor Pedro and a wildly argumentative government, while coffee quickly becomes the country's cash crop, leading to the continued importation of slave labor, breaking agreements with Great Britain to ban the practice.
Greed, suffering, persecution, and fear run through the veins of one of the most beautiful cities in the world as it struggles to overcome the hypocrisy and cruelty that threaten to overwhelm it.
About the Author: Douglas Reid Copeland is a novelist who was educated at Westminster College in Missouri and has lived in, and visited, over sixty countries.
Born in Brazil to American parents in 1947, he grew up in the Ipanema zone of Rio de Janeiro. Suffering mental trauma, child abuse, sexual abuse, psychological and frontal castration, toxic shame, neglect, and indifference during his formative and teenage years, Copeland developed chronic issues that marginalized him from society.
Only after his arrest in 1989 did he receive the help he needed to recover from his nightmarish life. After several years of probation and treatment via Dr. Fred Berlin's recovery program at Johns Hopkins, as well as twenty years of psychiatric therapy, medications, and twelve-step programs, Copeland is finally experiencing the freedom of redemption.
