A Thorny Path — Volume 03
1837
The third installment of Ebers's epic Egyptian saga finds its characters at a breaking point. Melissa, a Christian maiden of fierce devotion, watches as her betrothed Diodoros lies dying from wounds sustained in Alexandria's violent street clashes between pagans and Christians. Her only hope: a legendary physician whose door she must beg on bended knee, regardless of the cost. Andreas, the man who loves her in secret, must decide whether to abandon his own convictions and help her seek aid from a pagan doctor, or watch the man she loves perish. Ebers renders ancient Alexandria with the vivid detail of someone who walked its marble streets: the smell of incense bleeding from temples, the heat of political tensions between Cleopatra's dying world and the rising cross, the impossible choices faith demands of ordinary hearts. This is historical fiction at its 19th-century finest, where love and belief collide and no one emerges unchanged. For readers who savor sweeping romantic sagas wrapped in meticulous period detail.
