An attractive, older woman meets a dashing, young officer aboard a ship bound for America in the 1930's. What tragic fate awaits them at the end of their journey?
Jules Kincaid is a child writing prodigy of only fourteen when the novelist Arthur Brolin takes him from the slums of Chicago to a primitive, free lifestyle beach village in Indonesia late in WWI on a one-year writing sabbatical. Brolin says Jules has the necessary talent, but his writing does not yet have passion in it. Brolin isn't the only one who helps Jules to experiences that feed his passion and hone his writing.
The lives of two fugitive brothers of successive Phoenician kings become entwined in the villa of the Greek philosopher exile Phaedo, where one fugitive is Phaedo's fourteen-year-old catamite, Hiero, and the other, Prince Xander, brother of the current Phoenician king, is a hidden guest. Hiero and Xander's lives as sometimes lovers continue to intersect over the years of trying to gain the throne.
Following the Klan bombing of a church that killed several girls, a few black men decided to take revenge by abducting the daughters of Klan leaders, torturing and raping them. However in time they became reconciled with the girls and even had babies with them.
During the 2008 Summer Olympics, eight athletes enact a daring stunt for human rights. They are challenged by the communist Chinese government and then rescued by heroes from the nation's past.