Reviewed by Lisa Redmond
UNITED BY LETTERS. SEPARATED BY AN OCEAN. DEVASTATED BY WAR.
A letter isn't always just a letter. Words on the page can drench the soul.
Elspeth Dunn, a published poet living on the Isle of Skye, answers her first fan letter from Davey Graham, an impetuous young man in Illinois. Without having to worry about appearances or expectations, Elspeth and Davey confess their hopes, dreams and fears, things they've never told another soul. Even without meeting, they know one another. But as World War I engulfs Europe and Davey volunteers as an ambulance driver on the Western front, Elspeth can only wait on Skye, anxious for his return; wondering if they'll ever get a chance to meet.
Reviewed by Lisa Redmond
I have never written down the answers to the deepest mysteries, nor will I ever... The
philosopher Plato wrote these words more than two thousand years ago,
following a perilous voyage to Italy -- an experience about which he
never spoke again, but from which he emerged the greatest thinker in all
of human history.
Today, twelve golden tablets sit in museums
around the world, each created by unknown hands and buried in ancient
times, and each providing the dead with the route to the afterlife.
Archaeologist Lily Barnes, working on a dig in southern Italy, has just
found another. But this tablet names the location to the mouth of hell
itself.
And then Lily vanishes. Has she walked out on her job,
her marriage, and her life -- or has something more sinister happened?
Her husband, Jonah, is desperate to find her. But no one can help him:
not the police and not the secretive foundation that sponsored her dig.
All Jonah has is belief, and a determination to do whatever it takes to
get Lily back.
But like Plato before him, Jonah will discover the
journey ahead is mysterious and dark and fraught with danger. And not
everyone who travels to the hidden place where Lily has gone can return.
