Searching for the 'America' his late father spoke of, young Leon Ezra VanRaalte leaves the Netherlands and travels to the Cape Colony, Transvaal and the Bight of Benin in Africa, the Dutch East Indies, Nagasaki and Singapore in Asia, Suriname, in South America, Curacao and Hispaniola in the Caribbean, Washington D.C. and finally to the Eerste Gereformeerde Kerke in the Dutch kolonie of Holland, Michigan, on the way engaging in a Procession to the Shogun in Edo, the Boers' commando raid on Dr David Livingston's mission station at Kolobeng, the Confederate raider C.S, Alabama, the coolie trade, an uprising against King Willem III on the island of Celebes, the ironclad U.S.S. Nantucket, a Presidential reception, but not necessarily in that order. A bracing alternative to the wooden-shoed tulipism of the tourist brochures.

Not your mother's VanRaalte.