Mata Naveena
This novel of historical fiction follows of Shashi, an East Indian woman born in Bihar north of the Ganges in the early 20th century to her death there nearly a century later. In between, she goes to college and graduates as a teacher from Patna University where she met and married the love of her life Mohan and bears him five children. But when they move to the U.S. to be close to a married daughter and her family, her husband unexpectedly dies, and Shashi returns to Bihar to find her destiny as a spiritual leader.
Jesse, A man good enough
A young social reformer from Wisconsin in the mid-20th century experiences many of the travails of the early Christians per the Gospel of Luke. But when the powers that be think he threatens them, Jesse suffers a fate similar to Jesus himself which he only escapes by the skin of his teeth.
Southern Cross
This historical fiction hones in on the people of Southern Africa, especially those of Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Malawi of the British Central African Federation, from the beginning of time through the not-too-distant future. Immigrants of bushmen/pygmies, Arabs, Portuguese, and East Indians settle there, but in the end it is the Bantu-speakers especially the Siame family of Livingstone who come to the fore as they regain their independence from the British colonialists, and especially the adventures of Priscilla Siame after she returns from New York, her friend Yande, and her mother Agnes as they play out among the Lozi at their annual Kufuluhela rite and giant locusts under a constellation that can be seen only from the Southern Hemisphere.
Loca, Si O No
The first Sandovals arrived in Arizona not long after it was wrested away from Mexico in the mid-19th century. This first part of the Norzona Quartet follows the daily life of the Mexican family of Locaria and Fidencio Sandoval and their fourteen children through daily tranquility and torment that tease and torment them but always provides them the reassuring pleasures of love, music, food, and family.
The Original Sin
Natives of the three great Asian powers of India, China, and Russia struggle for primacy in this novel: journalist Piyush Gandhi and retired U.S. General Sagar Nehru on the run for kidnapping gone back in NYC team up with Mao’s current successor President Qi to flee South Asia and confront President Luteshenko of the Russian Federation in Moscow with unexpectedly violent results.
Ceremonial Cycles
Navajo-Hopi mixed-blood Paul Tse evolves from his gang of NAU pals including Shorty Sandoval from Sheldon and the Hopi healer Wayne he met in Flagstaff through Tucson years with his wife the Tohono O’odham Gloria as he gets a law degree from the U of A and then returning home to work for the Hopi General Counsel’s Office. There he becomes embroiled in Wayne’s assassination at cult dance which culminates in a federal murder proceeding tried back in Tucson. This Book Two of the Norzona Quartet focuses on Northern Arizona’s second major cultural group of its Native Americans, and the novel developes side by side with the Hopi’s brilliant annual ceremonial cycle.
Sinagua Greens
Book Three of the Norzona Quartet concerns the area’s third main cultural group consisting of cowboys, hippies and blue-collar workers principally in the person of Eric Lange, older brother of Paul Tse’s legal sidekick Mike Lange. Once divorced Eric tires of his work as a machinist in the family business, and returning home from a long trip along the Mexican border with his son Stevie, he decides to move over the mountain to the Verde Valley where he comes to earn a living by growing and selling weed. But when his children Stevie and his younger daughter Mandita join him there to work on his gilrlfriend Florence’s campaign for State Representatve based on the Verde Valley seceding from Yavapai County, tragedy strikes as Mandita is killed while trying to defuse a eco-terrorist’s bomb. Wrongfully implicated, Eric flees across the border and eventually settles down to work with the Guatemalan Maya where he finds the love of his life Asuxena, with whom he eventually returns home to the beaufiful green valley to clear himself in a dramatic denouement to the novel.
Empire Falls Fast
A disenchanted cop Jeff McNally from the woo-woo capital of the world named Empire Falls decides to join President Strunk’s Exploratory Force bound for Mars. After landing near the equator there, he leads an expedition north to ascertain whether there is life on the Red Planet, and not far from its artic Mare Acidalium, the diverse expedition discovers a ceremonial center founded by medieval Quechua natives from South America, but they are far from welcoming. Fleeing east, the expedition learns from a friendly Quechua outpost close by that far to the southeast exists a legendary underground civilization formed by a joinder of other Quechua pioneers with refugees from a distant galaxy named PSpS. Eventually, Jeff’s expedition makes its way down into the vast subterranean cavern called PSpS Plus and finds that the heterogenous civilization there has harnessed technology to solve life’s material and socio-political problems. But danger lurks when President Strunk plans a colonizing invasion of PSpS Plus to reap its rare-earth minerals, and Jeff’s friends NIkki and Milt from Empire Falls infiltrate the invasion and alert Jeff. In the end, a cataclysmic struggle for the soul of humankind and the future of the universe results.
Sedona Roots, A short novel
The concluding Book Four of the Norzona Quartet concentrates on the fourth and last major cultural group of Northern Arizona, yuppies and retirees by following the adventures of three women immigrants to the renowned town: the former academician/writer turned politician Sarah Golden who from the State Senate spearheads the secession of the new and separate Stae of Norzona, Palestinian refugee and dancer etc. Mariam Khoury running a local restaurant for her elderly father, and versatile New-Age shaman/healer Larissa Pietrowski from Chicago by way of Hawaii. Together they enlist the support of widower Paul Tse and his investigator Shorty Sandoval to resist the efforts of three men from Flagstaff to ravage the riches of the deep diamond deposit under nearby Secret Canyon Wilderness Area; Cleveland Motrel the CEO of Bessemer Materials, Sarah’s ex-husband and NAU geology prof Ernis Newton, and scion of an old Norzona political family Jim Malone. At stake is whether Sedona can reject the lure of obscene wealth for a few which will ruin it for everyone and instead choose supernatural help to make it “heaven on earth”.
Niña No More
A love story mostly set in the early part of the 21st century between a Peruvian cholita painter named Sonya Anchay Carrera and Michael Camilleri, a somewhat older architect from Houston, TX. As a tourist, Mchael meets Sonya in Lima and follows up their instantly torrid romance by a long-distance email and cellular courtship to return to Peru just before 9/11 to see if they can make it permanent. When Michael equivocates about his commitment, Sonya moves on to parley the help of a former lover the writer Martín Vasquez to make her dream come true of becoming a serious landscape painter depicting the wonderful colors and light of her native country, and eventually she becomes a renowned artist and commercial success in Paris. After Michael overcomes his dithering once more to make one last effort to connect with Sonya, she chooses the security of her helpmate countryman instead. When Michael finally retires and finds less happiness in his own dream of composing classical music less realized, he returns again to the Peruvian Andes to cleanse his soul and atop the magnificent Los Altos on the way to Chile serendipitously encounters the newlyweds Sonya and Martín, and the three sing and skip happily back down to the coastal plain to begin building the dynamic new ciudad oral for the masses…