In 1940, with the Japanese threatening to invade, Johnny and Snow embark upon their honeymoon, recounted in Snow's captivating journal, to the mysterious Seven Maiden Islands, accompanied by a mercurial Japanese professor and Peter Wormwood, an Englishman adrift. Many years later, Wormwood looks back on this defining journey, while Snow's only son goes in search of the truth of his mother and the infamous Chinaman she married.