Cmdr. Peter Wake Office of Naval Intelligence is in French Indochina in 1883 on a secret mission for President Chester Arthur. The novel opens with Wake aboard a riverboat on the Mekong River. The mission sounded simple in Washington deliver the American presidentamp39s reply to a confidential naval offer from the king of Cambodia while clandestinely assessing the regionamp39s political and military situation. Wake figures it will take two more weeks and heamp39ll be homeward bound. Six months later after nearly dying at the hands of opium warlords ChineseMalay pirates and French gangsters after suffering starvation at sea surviving a typhoon being marooned on a beach and enduring a horrific fullscale battleampmdashWake is still there. Exhausted frustrated and scared he and his motley band of companions can now testify that nothing is simple in the Kingdom of Cambodia and the Empire of Vietnam. This story illuminates the beginning of the bloody cultural clash that lasted for the next hundred years in Southeast Asia with each side determined to avenge their honored dead.The Honored Dead is the seventh in the awardwinning Honor Series of naval historical fiction following the life and career of Lt. Cmdr. Peter Wake from 1863 to 1907 a time when the United States Navy helped America become a global power.