What do we know about the wife of Henry Hudson? Mrs. Magellan? La Signora Christopher Columbus? History celebrates the exploits of male adventurers but tells us very little about their wives who were left at home. Eva of Ancona, Italy, challenges this narrative. Eva is the young wife of 'Jacob of Ancona', a thirteenth-century merchant, sailor, scholar and Jew, who, as the story goes, travelled to China four years before Marco Polo.

The Jewels of Dadu employs folklore and myth but is essentially a frame tale. The frame is Eva's daily rounds through the markets of medieval Ancona tending the family business in Jacob's absence while navigating a lovestruck rabbi and the education of a growing boy. The tales are spun evenings at bedtime when, armed with an old map and an imagination, Eva invents Jacob's voyage for their little son over nearly three years, or, a thousand-and-one nights.