While the first Spanish expedition to the Moluccas, led by Magellan and completed by Elcano, is a story known to all, the second, in 1525, under the command of frey García Jofre de Loaysa and with the iconic Juan Sebastián Elcano as second in command, remains in the shadows of history. Both leaders perished from ciguatera in the vast Pacific Ocean, leaving behind an enigma in which Maria emerges as a pivotal figure. In his will, Don Garcia reveals that he travelled with Maria, a coloured slave without even the right to a surname. After her master's death, Maria's story takes on a life of its own, reaching its apotheosis in the war that would pit Spanish and Portuguese against each other over the ownership of the uber-rich spice-producing islands. Throughout this gripping novel, the figure of Maria grows in sweeping fashion until she becomes the first woman to sail the two great oceans and, perhaps, the first to circumnavigate the Earth in the footsteps of Juan Sebastian Elcano.
