| THE GREEK TRILOGY: THE DREAMING STONE (50,000 words) IN THE SHADOW OF TROY (60,000 words) THE GATES OF FREEDOM (68,000 words) The Dreaming Stone 50,000 words In the essay I wrote for Christianity Today (“Myth Matters: C. S. Lewis bequeathed us a method and a language for sharing the gospel with the modern and postmodern world"), I lamented that “the Christian world has yet to produce a true successor to Lewis in the hybrid genre of popular/serious, Christian/ secular fiction." I then surveyed some of the reasons why the Chronicles of Narnia have not only proven to be perennial favorites among child and adult audiences but have succeeded in yoking together the twin legacies of Athens and Jerusalem. In response to this lament, I have fashioned my own children’s novel in such a way as to combine the Christian elements of Narnia with the recent desire for magic, adventure, and heroism illustrated by the success of the Harry Potter series. The Dreaming Stone tells the tale of two children, an eight-year-old boy (Alex) and a seven-year-old girl (Stacey) who, during a holiday in Greece, find two magical objects that transport them back into the world of Greek mythology. I have copied out below a synopsis of the plot and the table of contents, but what the synopsis does not convey are the deeper themes and goals of the book. Its goals are three-fold: 1) to inspire children (and their parents) to re-experience the wonder and beauty of our classical and mythological heritage; 2) to revive traditional virtues and values that our era seems to have lost; 3) to demonstrate how many of the themes and desires expressed in Greek mythology both point to and find their fulfillment in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. This third goal develops slowly in the form of a riddle passed down from the father to his children. The father tells his children that the relationship between mythology and the Bible is like that between a candle and the sun; during the course of the novel, the children will “solve” this riddle and learn its true meaning. You will notice in the synopsis that the father in the story is in a coma. The purpose of this detail is to suggest that our modern age has lost its patriarchal legacy, and that without that legacy, we are displaced and left adrift. The novel should, I hope, have a wide appeal to Christians of all denominations as well as to a more secular audience who hunger for magic and mystery. It should also prove, I hope, of equal intereste to both children and adults. SYNOPSIS OF THE DREAMING STONE While their father lies in a coma in a Texas hospital, Alex (8), Stacey (7), and their mother go for a summer holiday to Greece to try to take their minds off of their father’s stable but unchanging condition. After spending several days on a farm in Sparta, the three journey to the ancient sites of Epidauros, Mycenae, and Athens. At Epidauros, a site once sacred to Asclepius, the god of healing, Stacey learns that devotees would sleep in a sacred building, during which the god would appear to them in a dream and reveal the cure they needed. Convinced that the site might hold something with the power to heal her father, Stacey begins to dig among the ruins. She discovers an egg-shaped stone with the Greek word for sleep etched on it, and dubs it the dreaming stone. While at Mycenae, the children are frightened by the ghost of Cassandra and run off. They are met by a strange man who turns out to be the god Pan. Pan leaves a set of panpipes behind as a gift for Alex. Alex picks up the pipes and discovers he can play them. That night, at Athens, Stacey puts the dreaming stone under her pillow and asks Alex to play the pipes to help her fall asleep. He does so, and the stone begins to glow. The children soon wake up to find that they have been catapulted back in time to the age of Greek mythology. In the space of an evening, they assist Perseus on his quest to cut off Medusa’s head, ride to Athens on the back of Pegasus, witness the contest between Athena and Poseidon for the right to be patron of Athens, and give the head of Medusa to Athena to place on her shield. The next night, Alex plays his panpipes again, the stone glows, and the children are sucked into a second set of adventures. They meet Demeter and accompany her on her search for her lost daughter Persephone. Alex, who knows the tale (their father is a college professor who has instructed his children well in the myths of ancient Greece), tells Demeter that her daughter was kidnapped by Hades. Demeter swears she will go to Mount Olympus to consult Zeus, but first she takes the children to Eleusis, where she disguises herself as a servant. She grows attached to the Queen’s son and plans to make him immortal, but when the Queen becomes too curious (despite being warned by the children, who tell her the tale of Pandora’s Box), Demeter is angered and leaves. Their next stop is Mount Olympus, where Alex haggles with Hades to allow Persephone to spend 8 months with her mother and 4 months with Hades. Along with Demeter, Zeus, and Hades, Alex and Stacey fly back to the earth, where they watch Persephone emerge from a cave that leads down to hades. Suddenly, everyone disappears, and the children meet Orpheus, who is seeking the portal to hades so that he may retrieve his dead wife. The children show him the cave, and together they journey to the throne of Hades, where Orpheus plays his lyre and wins back the soul of Eurydice. They all leave, but when Orpheus looks back, Eurydice is pulled back into hades. Alex teaches Orpheus what they have learned about the cycles of nature; the children are then pulled back to the present. TO READ THE CHAPTERS DESCRIBED IN THE ABOVE PARAGRAPH, PLEASE CLICK HERE. Their third adventure begins in the palace of Knossos, Crete, when the children are transported to the ancient labyrinth of King Minos. Together with Daedalus and Icarus, they escape through the air. Alex hopes to be able to save Icarus but ends up having to save his sister instead. They continue to fly east, where they join Phaethon in his fatal attempt to drive the Chariot of the Sun. They are rescued by Pegasus and brought back to Athens; there, they meet up with Theseus, who is about to sail to Crete, where he and thirteen others are to be fed to the Minotaur that lives in the labyrinth. With the help of Alex and Stacey, Theseus defeats the Minotaur. Their final set of (brief) adventures allows them to see the caves of Endymion and the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, to visit the Oracle of Delphi and John of Patmos, and to hear St. Paul preach at the Areopagus. When they return to Texas, Stacey puts her dreaming stone under her father’s pillow, and Alex plays the panpipes. The stone glows, and the father wakes from his coma. Upon returning home, he tells the children that while he was in his coma, he saw all of their adventures in a dream. IN THE SHADOW OF TROY 60,000 words A sequel to The Dreaming Stone, in which Alex and Stacey are visited in their Houston home by Pan and told that they must return with him to Ancient Greece to prevent an evil force (known only as the Accuser) from disrupting the proper flow of the Trojan War and thus changing the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer. In helping to set the Trojan War back on the proper track, Alex and Stacey interact with all the famous characters and events of Homer and learn how and why Homer is so foundational to Western culture. THE GATES OF FREEDOM 68,000 words The third and final installment in my Greek Trilogy. In this novel, Alex and Stacey, during a trip to San Antonio, TX, are carried back in time to the Battle of the Alamo. There they are met by Hercules who takes them further back in time to the Battle of Thermopylae (480 BC). Hercules tells the children that Leonidas, the leader of the 300 Spartans, has lost his faith in freedom and is thinking about abandoning his post. If he does so, the Persians will defeat the Greeks and Western civilization will be robbed of its tradition of freedom. Alex is told that he must convince Leonidas to fight, but before he can do that, he must learn what freedom truly is. Accordingly, Alex and Stacey are taken farther back in time to witness (and take part in) the trial of Orestes, the foundations of Athenian freedom by Solon, and the first Persian attack of Greece in 490 BC (Marathon). They are also taken to the courts of Darius and Xerxes that they might understand the enemy. When Alex finally returns to Thermopylae, he must convince Leonidas alone, for Stacey has another mission: she must convince Esther to appear before Xerxes and save the lives of the Jewish people. It is from these two gates (the Greek and the Jewish), the children learn, that western freedom has issued. Whereas the first novel concerns itself with Greek mythology, and the second with Greek legend (the tales of Homer), the third book takes place in real history. |