The Island of Seven Cities: Where the Chinese Settled When They Discovered America

In 2003, Paul Chiasson climbed a mountain he never explored on the island where he grew up. Cape Breton, one of the oldest points of exploration in the Americas, is littered with remnants of old settlements. The road he found that day was unique. Consistently wide and formerly bordered with stone walls, the road had been a major undertaking. For the next two years, he surveyed the history of Europeans in North America, and came to a stunning conclusion: The ruins he came upon did not belong to the Portuguese, French, or English and pre-dated John Cabot's "discovery" of the island in 1497. With aerial and site photographs, maps, drawings and his expertise in the history of architecture, Chiasson pieces together clues to one of the world's great mysteries. The Island of Seven Cities reveals the existence of a large Chinese colony that thrived on Canadian shores well before the European Age of Discovery and unveils the first tangible proof that the Chinese were in the New World before Columbus.