A Young Macedonian in the Army of Alexander the Great

The year is 334 BC. Alexander's army marches east toward Persia, and in its ranks walks Charidemus, a young Macedonian soldier who carries a weight no sword can cut: he is a stranger in his own alliance. The Greeks who fight beside him call his people farmers and barbarians. The Macedonians who raised him see him as half-softened by their enemies' ways. Between these two worlds, Charidemus must find where a man truly belongs. Church paints the campaigns of Granicus and Issus not merely as battles but as crucibles of identity. As Charidemus rises through the ranks, he faces questions that no victory can answer: What does loyalty mean when your comrades despise your blood? What is honor worth when the gods of your fathers seem to have fled? The novel captures the raw, turbulent spirit of a world being remade by conquest, and one young man caught in the forge. Written in 1889 with scholarly precision and Romantic verve, this is a book for anyone who has ever felt caught between two worlds, and wondered which, if either, would have them.