"Are you the lady who is to teach the royal family?"
She inclined her head slightly. "I am."
"Have you friends in Bangkok?"
"I know no one in Bangkok at all."

When Anna arrives on a crowded dock in Siam in 1862, she is afraid her friends might have been right: A country as "backward" as Siam is no place for a proper young Englishwoman. And when she meets the king, who is unbearably headstrong and arrogant, she is quite positive she has made a huge mistake.

But then Anna begins her post as governess to the royal children (all sixty-seven of them!), and it's not long before they taught her to love the beauty and excitement of this strange new land. Suddenly she has more friends than she could ever hope for. Yet in the kingdom of Siam, there are rules Anna cannot accept. And as her relationship with the king grows, the conflicts between them grow too. If they are to overcome their differences, Anna and the King will have to meet somewhere between East and West….