Publisher's Synopsis
5,202 years ago, Weida and Patros flee north up the river road from the rising smoke of Ausgrenor, accompanied by Bedu friends and hired caravan guides. They plan to rendezvous ahead with their adopted children and Bedu minders. Pursued by the Ausgrenor king, they now find the road ahead blocked by approaching invaders, and veer west across the trackless waste of the Desert of Death to an oasis, nine days ahead, at the limit of their camels. They cover their tracks from pursuers. Despite missing the rendezvous and seeing their plan collapse, Patros and Weida remain sanguine-even detached-unnerving their companions, who fear they are losing their sanity. Will the King's men pick up the trail? Or the invaders? Or the children? Those questions will matter only if they can reach the oasis. Thus continues the six-novel Raising Up Pharaoh epic, set among the emerging city-states and nations in the Fertile Crescent at the dawn of written history-as they plant the cultural seeds of today's world. The series is written for readers of all ages. The tone is intense, yet controlled by zooming back the lens to avoid needless close-ups of violence and sexuality. The tale unfolds through the differing viewpoints of the orphans, the couple, others drawn to them, and their foes. The second book's setting ranges through the northwestern mountains of what is now called Iran, throughout Iraq from the southwestern desert across the central Tigris and Euphrates valley and down to the delta with the Gulf, and into northeastern Syria. In later books, the setting expands throughout the Middle East, the Steppes, West and South Asia, and Northwest Africa. Each book has its own maps. The diverse cast speaks a pidgin of proto-Indo-European, proto-Afro-Semitic, and various lost languages such as Harappan. The pidgin is presented in modern U.S. English. The Raising Up Pharaoh novels were edited by Dr. Dennis E. Hensley PhD.
