A bittersweet yet gentle love story set in Taboga, the Island of the Flowers, from where the Spaniard Francisco Pizarro sailed to the conquest of Peru and Paul Gauguin spent time when working on the French attempt to build the Panama Canal.

This highly charged romantic novel takes place on Taboga Island in the Bay of Panama.  It is an island caught up in its past, suffering from poverty and superstition, owned by a nation oppressed by both church and state. The local island leader, Marco Rodriguez, is an enigmatic man, a teacher who cares deeply for his people's welfare.  Though he has no official title, the islanders know him as the Devil Man, a figure from Panamanian legend.  A third generation Devil Man, Marco inherited his Stone from his father.  Accepting the Stone, he has made a pact with the Devil.  He carried the Stone, a religious artifact, embedded in his arm. US University educated, Marco is torn by the opposing worlds, one steeped in religious superstition, and the other riddled with immediate social, political and economic problems.  He is secretly uncertain of the alleged power of his Stone.  But who would he be without it?  This is Marco's terror.  

"A haunting romance blending the glitter and glamor or the Gilded Age with a 20th century love story.  The story is set in Newport, Rhode Island, home of those mansions called, in their time, summer cottages.  Two women, Minnie Prescott, once mistress of the great house, Prescott Hall, and Anne Wellstone, her great-great-great niece, join hands across a century."