In this gorgeous, suspenseful novel, a Russian aristocrat races to stop a plague spreading from an isolated Manchurian city to the rest of the world. Based on a true story, this novel was inspired by the author's discovery of a long-lost book by a Russian doctor who chronicled a plague epidemic in Manchuria in 1910.

1910. People are dying at an alarming rate in the Russian-ruled city of Kharbin, a major railway outpost in Northern China. Some of the dead bodies vanish before they can be identified. The Baron, a wealthy Russian aristocrat and the city's medical commissioner, is determined to stop this mysterious plague. Torn between duty and compassion, between Western medical science and respect for Chinese tradition, his allies include a French doctor, a black marketeer, and a charismatic Chinese dwarf. His greatest refuge is the intimacy he shares with his young Chinese wife... but she has secrets of her own