A novel of faith and courage. Brother Bernardo, a Spanish missionary to the desolate regions of New Spain, is captured by the Apaches. As a slave to the heathens, he loses his faith, then finds it again, deeper and stronger than before. Held captive by both the barrier of forbidding desert and the savage Indians, he learns to love and understand his captors. This is also the larger story of the confrontation between deep rooted beliefs, Christianity and the Apache culture.
Can a man of God kill to protect those he loves and to save his own life? That is the question Bernardo must ultimately face in the unforgiving deserts of the Southwest.
Excerpt
"He had come to love this land and these people because it was here that his dreams had flowered and wilted. There is within a man a special warmth for the places of his failures. These mountains were more real to him now than the hazy recollections of youth. Here he had been close to nature and had come to love everything about it: the feel of the burning sun on his shoulders, the faint growing sounds of springtime grasses when they pushed up from the soil, the warm embrace of the earth beneath his reclining body at night, the whisper of each autumnal leaf as it fell. Mostly he enjoyed the soliture and the silence that had been a big part in the making of him as he was. Yet just as the roots of a transplanted tree eternally carry the imprint of the soil that originally nurtured them, so the memories of his origins were indelible upon his soul."
Book I of Southern Swallow Series – 12th Century scholar Li K'ai-men takes command of his first official assignments during a time of political unrest and barbarian invasions.
Joli Stewart is raised in the lap of luxury on her father's plantation near Charleston, South Carolina. High spirited, non-traditional and head strong, Joli refuses to accept any interference in her life or her romantic decisions. Follow her life dur
