Beginning with the author's grandfather, Richard John Joseph Malone, three generations of the Malone family lived in the Far East. Richard left Dublin for the army in 1865 and blazed the family trail to the Orient, posted first to India and eventually settling in China, via Canada, Egypt and Sudan. Desmond Malone tells his family's history against a background of world-shaking events - the beginning of European trade with China, the opium wars, the Sino-Japanese conflict, the Second World War, and including the family's internment in Japanese prison camps - allowing the reader to see the more personal story of real people manipulated by circumstance. In showing us the bravery and spirit of himself and his contemporaries, the author reveals to the reader the power of human determination on the grand scale, highlighted by the shining inspiration that individual fortitude can provide.