Fire Pearl

On a stormy Irish strand, Kate runs in panic from from her would-be lover's kiss ( "I am too young!"). Years later she hears a terrifying African story about a girl leaping into a fire to save her beloved from death, and realises she had rejected the one man she deeply loved and must seek him through heaven and earth or die in the attempt. She is accompanied in her search - sometimes helped, sometimes threateningly challenged - by the multiple flickering flames of Fire that surround her. She knows her love is on the other side of a hotly burning forest fire but whatever route she tries - around the forest, up through the stars, swimming through the ocean that circles the earth and the hidden archive in its bottomless depths - she cannot reach him, Finally, having at last sufficiently tested her love, The Flames direct her to go on a terrifying route down down down through the countless aeons of geologic time to the deep, hidden, fire that energises the earth, and that is at the same time the central spark of her own being. There she finds Vulcan and his smiths working with molten iron on their red-hot anvil. There too is the eternally scorching fire into which she must plunge to find Him. Fire Pearl is the fourth volume in the literary, poetic-prose, Kate-Pearl epic series: The Black Inked Pearl, The Helix Pearl (as told by the wine-dark garrulous sea), Pearl of the Wind (in preparation), and the fairytale prequel The Fijian Pearl; two more volumes are planned (coming, like the others, in dreams) but not yet written. All tell basically the same mythic tale but from different perspectives. A mythical story of two lovers whose connection transcends space and time [that] weaves together biblical allusions, fantasy, and details of the modern day (KIRKUS Review of "The Black Inked Pearl" )