The year is 1890. Enzam’s existence has been lonely and unfulfilling, so when her ship is overtaken by pirates in the East Indies, it seems the last sorry chapter in her life. Dijenkau, a Makassar shipmaster, has experienced his own lifetime of lovelessness. Born to a British father and an Aboriginal mother, he learned early on to make his own way, as he didn't feel he belonged anywhere. When Enzam and Dijenkau are abandoned at sea by the pirates, the two strangers are bound together by some unspoken vow. Soon, Enzam finds herself on an unexpected journey with the strange shipmaster, searching for an ancient aphrodisiac recipe that was lost fifty years earlier in the heart of the Australian desert. Yet, as the explorers travel deeper into Australia’s last bloody frontier, they begin to realize that they too are being hunted. Struggling to trust, much less survive, Enzam cannot bring herself to admit that she knows who pursues them. A thrilling historical novel, Enzam and the Just Prince is also an intelligent literary story that poses deep questions about morality, social expectations, and our treatment of the most vulnerable among us.
