The Weight of Smoke: So begins the chronicles of the Elizabethan Age.

Four hundred years after the founding of Jamestown, the lives of Captain John Smith, Powhatan, and Pocahontas assume their true dimensions in this far-ranging saga of the beginnings of the British Empire. The English came to the New World to found a utopia. Instead they founded a slave state. The only English voice of reason and the first true American hero became an outcast - and then forgotten.

George Robert Minkoff presents a rich, authentic tale about the disastrous first 18 months of the Jamestown Colony, 1607-1609. Entwined with the colony’s fractious beginnings are the adventures of Sir Francis Drake, retold around the campfires by an old alchemist, Jonas Profit, who sailed the Spanish Main with Queen Elizabeth’s favorite pirate.

Appropriately, these tales are told in a language rich with metaphorical power, flavored with Elizabethan authenticity, and read with power and authenticity by Nigel Gore.

“George Minkoff is one of the bravest men alive. He has gambled that a three-part epic novel about 17th century Colonial America — written in a language that mimics the speech of the time — can hold the interest of 21st century readers and bring satisfactions and delights as a work of contemporary fiction. Remarkably enough, he has won his bet.'

~ Paul Aster