Kikutsuru Kenzaemon is the daughter of a Western educated career soldier. James Prewitt is an American war veteran traveling through Asia and trying to finish his novel. When the two of them cross paths, they find that helping one another may be their key to finding themselves in the twilight of Japan's quickly modernizing landscape. ------------ 1867. The end of the Edo Period. Japan is about to change forever. Kikutsuru's father won't talk of her mother or her extended family. They live alone in a small house in Tokyo. The only thing she knows of them is that her mother's family were once samurai from a distant town. Desperate to learn more, she seeks out any chance to get out of the city and finds it in an American veteran. James Prewitt is a veteran of two wars and is looking to finish his novel - his only catharsis for the horrors he witnessed. Travelling through Asia looking for inspiration, he finds himself in Japan at the moment when everything is on the cusp of changing. In need of a translator, he finds help in the form of Kikutsuru. Together, the three travel to the village of Houmei, where samurai still rule led by a twelve year old boy and the elusive Lord Kajiwara. Desperate to chronicle their lives and learn of her own family, Kikutsuru helps James translate and learns what it means to be a warrior in an age that seems all too ready to leave them behind, and the two begin to learn about their own place in a rapidly changing world. Cover By: @TheSquareCheese