Showing results by author "Nick Pappas" in All Categories

In October 1913, 261 miners and two rescuers died when a massive explosion ripped through a mine operated by Phelps, Dodge & Company in Dawson, New Mexico. Ten years later, a second blast claimed the lives of another 120 miners. Today, Dawson is a deserted ghost town. All that remains is a sea of white iron crosses memorializing the nearly four hundred miners killed in the two explosions-a death toll unmatched by mine disasters in any other town in America.

A Sicilian rival to Helen of Troy is sent by the gods into the 21st century's "Witness Protection Program" to pose as an English teacher and preserve the course of history. She meets Nick, another teacher, who is taken with her and is puzzled by her obsession with the tale of "The Odyssey." The gods and goddesses are attempting to avert a crisis caused by Zeus being duped by the Oracle, who in tum was tricked by Aphrodite, which complicates a prophecy that leads Maria and Nick back 3,000 years to Sicily and an encounter with Odysseus.