Stories from Virgil

The Aeneid is the stone upon which Western literature was built, and this 19th-century retelling brings Virgil's epic into bracing prose. Here is the fall of Troy not as legend but as lived horror: Aeneas carrying his aged father on his back, holding his son's hand through streets afire, knowing the city he loves is dying and he cannot stay. Church captures the raw weight of a man caught between the gods' demands and his own breaking heart. The story follows Aeneas as he sails from the smoking ruins of Troy toward a destiny he did not choose. He faces the wrath of Juno, wanders the Mediterranean, falls devastatingly in love with Queen Dido of Carthage, and ultimately wages war in Italy to found the city that will become Rome. Each step demands sacrifice, and each sacrifice costs him something irreplaceable. This is the original story of duty versus desire, of a man who builds an empire with his own hands while his heart remains in ashes. Church wrote for readers who wanted the power of the original without the barrier of Latin verse. The result is narrative prose that moves with the momentum of fate itself: relentless, tragic, and magnificent.