The Hostage

Mary R. DeMaine tells her friends that she excavated The Hostage from experiences she had along two very different paths - a straight and narrow one through academia where she taught ancient art and archaeology, excavated, and wrote scholarly articles - and an amorphous one that led her to write several poems and short stories that have been published in small presses. The Hostage is her first novel. It is an action-filled story with as many unexpected twists and intriguing turns as the narrow mountain roads the author navigated on her 50 cc Vespa the first time she visited Greece.

The action begins in Attica on a narrow path that winds its way down a steep outcropping to a port on the Aegean coast. Philocleon, the son of an Attic landowner, and his slave, Nicias, watch a ship sail into the port. The ship turns out to be carrying the poet Homer. Philocleon and Homer meet shortly thereafter when the poet is thrown off the ship and collides with Philocleon. He takes Homer to his father's estate that night and the cataclysmic events that follow alter irrevocably the lives of Homer, Philocleon, his bride-to-be, father, servants, and even the potter who works on the estate.

There are two paths to this novel. The foreword contains information for those readers who wish to consider how the story interweaves the controversies surrounding Homer. Those readers who don't care about the academic questions can fast-forward to the first page of the novel with full confidence that there is nothing in the foreword that is needed to understand and enjoy the story.