THE ARCADIAN

A man who has lived many lives appears in tumultuous 16th-century Spain.

During the reign of King Ferdinand of Aragon, an itinerant iron man—a sharpener of tools—arrives at the girl Mariah’s farm. He is Telamon, of the Greek province of Arcadia, and he has an X tattooed on his arm. But Mariah senses much more in the man. “You pretend to be a simple tinker, but you carry secrets,” she tells him, believing he carries devils. She is right. In fact, he is a penitente who had been a Roman soldier and a grievous sinner in previous lives and is condemned to continue living miserable lives forever. The only thing that can release him and let him finally die once and for all is a curious, improbable set of conditions set, apparently, by the Almighty. One reader might exclaim that the Lord works in mysterious ways while others might just see a contrived plot device. Either way, it serves well to deliver a dramatic finale. Early in the story, Mariah’s farm is pillaged by marauding Portuguese invaders led by Severiano—the Severe One—whose primary task is to find and confiscate hundreds of tons of black powder. For his own reasons, he also wants the iron man, his horse, and Mariah. Speaking of equines, Telamon’s horse is a noble, unnamed animal, and the two have a deep emotional connection. Severiano’s magnificent steed is named La Mano Derecha de Dios, or The Right Hand of God, and both animals figure significantly in the story. Meanwhile, Telamon is an army deserter and vows to “never again harm another human being. I will never bear arms again in war.” Instead, he commits himself to protecting Mariah and his horse, also branded with an X. Mariah has hallucinations that open up Telamon’s past as a Roman legionnaire centuries before. The tale’s dramatic set piece is the siege of a citadel, portrayed in wrenching detail. The literary style is replete with rhetorical flourishes such as “A cry of joy sprang from twice a hundred townsmen’s throats.”

An imaginative tale of penitence, bravery, and blood.