In 1891, Joe Strong moved with his wife and child to Samoa to live with Robert Louis Stevenson at Vailima, a plantation that Stevenson was carving out of the wilderness. Joe's wife was Stevenson's step-daughter. Joe and Louis had been friends for years and were close in age and temperament. Joe was a painter who had studied in Germany and was also an early photographer. Joe had been there before, and upon returning immediately resumed an affair with a native girl, a Sava dancer, whom he loved. He and all of the Stevenson clan became intimately involved with the power struggle between a rebel leader and the king who was appointed by the Germans there. And war was eminent.