The Last Marco Polo is a historical fictional love story that took place in 1937 Shanghai on the eve of the Sino-Japanese War. It is set in one of the darkest times in Chinese history, against the background of actual historical events and places few people today know anything about. The story begins with Jack Wells took on an overseas job assignment at the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank in Shanghai, the Pearl of the Orient and a city of decadent opulence and crushing poverty. After settling into a comfortable expatriate life in the French Concession part of the city, he would meet a beautiful girl at the New Hope Church, where his father was its pastor. As their love began to germinate, war broke out between China and Japan and their lives were quickly thrown together as they tried to help people made homeless by the bombing of Shanghai. As the fighting intensified, an unexpected turn of events took them to Nanking, the then capital of China, where they bore witness to the horrors of the "Nanking Massacre," when over 300,000 Chinese died at the hands of the Japanese soldiers in just a few weeks. As they underwent the violent events that were tearing China apart, their love bloomed.; but in the end, the karma that had brought together, history kept them apart---Such is their love story progressively unfolding for the readers of "The Last Marco Polo."
