Brice         Austin

It is 1941. Rose and Dr. Jack Blake, on the run from suffocating lives in Richmond, Virginia’s upper-crust society, arrive in Macao, Portugal’s Far East colony. She is nineteen, he forty, and both their names and marriage are fictions.

Soon, Jack is working at one of the local hospitals, charged with the impossible task of treating the tens of thousands of refugees pouring into the city from war-torn mainland China. Rose, pregnant with a child she isn’t certain she wants, becomes involved with a network of spies orchestrated by a charismatic Eurasian businessman, Charlie Ho. As Rose and Jack’s relationship unravels, Hong Kong is attacked, bringing the Pacific War to Macao’s doorstep.

Meanwhile, António Ferreira, Chief of Police in this so-called City of the Name of God, wrestles with twin obsessions. While relentlessly pursuing Wong Kong Kit, a bandit who is throttling the flow of smuggled rice that is keeping both Macao’s residents and refugees alive, Ferreira contemplates abandoning his family and career for the sake of the “Singsong girl” Lanhua, an elegant prostitute.

Against the backdrop of a rapidly-spreading World War, and the growing threat of Japanese invasion, these three restless souls search for the meaning of Love, Freedom, Responsibility and Salvation in the “Casablanca of the Orient.”



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