'Sea Of Dreams' continues the sage of 'Tears Of The Sun', moving between Asia and Australia, dealing with characters caught up in the diverging demands of race and religion.
"Mythic imagination is the song. It's what gives shape and form to our feelings. If we kill the bird, we kill the song and with it goes the spirit, the very essence of who we are."
"But we have to live our myth to work out a sense of purpose and form, and thus experience the balance and harmony which comes with belonging."
So writes Sophie Baillieu in her doctoral thesis. She has only just discovered that her late husband, American photojournalist David Chapman, was the father of a now thirteen-years-old Vietnamese daughter, Mai. Li, the dying mother of the child has written, begging Sophie to come to Saigon to rescue Mai. The year is 1985, fourteen years after the death of Sophie's husband in a car bombing while on assignment in Vietnam covering the conflict.
Sophie's journey into Saigon and Hue, to seek out the truth of her husband's violent death and decide Mai's fate, reveals glimpses of a tragic war and its after effects as seen through the eyes of its Vietnamese, American and Australian participants. As Sophie pieces together the unfinished story of David and Li's love affair, she learns the real extent of enigmatic family patriarch, uncle Gerard Baillieu's, role in the conflict. Through an assassination attempt on his life, Gerard is reunited with the one woman he has truly loved, Iman al Assad, and is drawn into the world of Islam.
'Sea Of Dreams' follows the fortunes of the Baillieu family, first begun in 'Tears Of The Sun' in Tokyo, 1922, with Hiroko Sen and Boy Baillieu's ill-fated marriage. The ensuing turbulent political and religious cross-currents resurface in 'Sea Of Dreams', as its cast of players cross continents and cultures impelled to seek out their own personal myth.
