Download or read book The Pure Land written by Alan Spence and published by Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 2007-12-01 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Pure Land resurrects the dramatic life of Thomas Glover, the Scottish businessman who helped overthrow the shogun and whose tumultuous love affairs inspired the opera Madame Butterfly and the musical Miss Saigon. Alan Spence has transformed this true story into an unforgettable hundred-year saga that culminates in the annihilation of Nagasaki. Thomas Glover is a gutsy eighteen-year-old in Aberdeen in 1858 who grasps the chance of escape to foreign lands and takes a posting as a trader in Japan. Within ten years he amasses a great fortune, helps to modernize Japan, and, on the other side of the law, brings about the overthrow of the shogun. Yet beneath GloverÕs astonishing success lies a man cut to the heart. His love affair with a courtesanÑa woman who, unknown to him, would bear him the son for whom he had always longedÑwould form a tragedy so heartrending that the story became immortal. Called Òa page-turner of the first order . . . an engaging and vivid historical novel, but also a meditative work of artÓ by The Times of London, The Pure Land is a modern epic, a rattling good adventure, a devastating love story, and a journey of the spirit.