Becky's first novel,
Sinister Paradise, was published in the spring of 1993. We re-met and fell in love that fall, a time of delirious happiness for me.
One night before bed in my apartment in Rochester, MN, I picked up her book. Since I had to teach an 8am English class, and since I don't read mysteries, I intended to skim the three-page prologue so I could say I had at least looked at the book.
But from the first sentence, I was hooked, transported to Santorini, Greece. I couldn't stop reading. Would Britt and Cassie admit their love for each other? Would Britt survive the "accidents" at the archeological site? Would she uncover the smuggling operation? I finished the book at 3am.
I'd had no idea Becky could write so well. Good writing touches me deeply. If I hadn't already been completely smitten, this intense lesbian mystery/love story would have toppled me into the caldera.
I soon learned more about Becky's connections to Greece and other ancient cultures.
When she was 27, for her first trip abroad, she backpacked alone through Greece for six weeks. Four years later, she returned to gather material for
Sinister Paradise. She stayed nearly a month.
Becky's idea of a good read is
The Iliad. She re-reads it or
The Odyssey almost every year. She pores over
The Aeneid, Herodotus, and descriptions of Minoan culture. Our Kindle contains, among her books for this trip,
Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe,
The Oracle: Ancient Delphi, and Thucydides'
History of the Peloponnesian War, published in 431BCE! One day a few years ago, we rounded a corner in a
museum in Torino, Italy to a huge breath-taking statue of the goddess Athena. Becky burst into tears.
She often said that she wanted to take me to the Acropolis, Santorini, Delphi, Knossos, and other places she loves, but Greece got bumped to the back burner by other more pressing travel.
Finally we are here, in a land where history is measured in millennia, where huge temples to Athena dominate contemporary cities' high ground, and where Becky believes she lived in one or perhaps many past lives.
Last week our ferry sailed into Santorini's extraordinary caldera, created around 1450BCE, when a volcano exploded and collapsed. We hopped a local bus to Kamari Beach, the site of some
of the novel's most intense action. Although it was so cold that we were the only people on the long black beach, I could imagine Britt and Cassie's sailboards blazing through the sun-drenched blue-green Aegean waves.
I had been re-reading
Sinister Paradise for the first time since 1993, restricting myself to 3 or 4 chapters a day to prolong the pleasure. That night, I picked up
Sinister Paradise to read a chapter near the end. Mistake! Gripped by the action and impressed all over again by the sheer skill of the writing, I couldn't stop until I had reached the nerve-shattering conclusion.
If you haven't read
Sinister Paradise, there are several copies on Amazon for one cent plus shipping. Or, even better, you can reduce our attic inventory and get a personally autographed copy directly from the author!
Nancy
Although things happen serendipitously at home, amazing
coincidences bless us even more abundantly when we travel. We catch the only
bus, get the last hotel room, show up at a museum on its one (announced) free
day of the year, and tour the ruins on the only day it’s not raining.
Last year, Becky and
I were hiking in Greece. The rocky trail was much steeper, longer, and hotter
than we had thought. Seeing the next town at a great distance along the jagged
coast, we realized we didn’t have enough water or strength to reach it and
wondered out loud what to do. We hadn’t seen another hiker for over an hour.
Right then a man and woman appeared on the trail walking toward us. They spoke
English. They lived nearby. If we turned off the trail just up ahead, we could
reach the road through their yard. The bus to our destination stopped across
from their house.
