The Next 'Odyssey'?

THE OVERLOOK

By Tom Clavin

“The Overlook” appears every Wednesday at tomclavin.substack.com. If you enjoy the column, please “like” it and let me know what you think by commenting. All support is appreciated. Don’t forget to hit the ‘Subscribe’ button – it’s free!

Given the box-office success of The Odyssey, perhaps some enterprising filmmaker will want to take on another ancient literature classic: The Aeneid. And as it happens, just published is a perfect piece of “intellectual property,” as Hollywood types say: Via, inspired by Virgil’s epic tale.

The story picks up where Homer left off. Aeneas, his son, best friend, and others seek refuge in the distant city of Carthage. They lost their homes and loved ones when Troy was destroyed at the end of the Trojan War. Aeneas is a prince, father, now the sole leader of his people, and scarred by his past. The determination not to fail his people ever again and to find them a new home looms large in his soul.

Haymon is a mercenary Greek general, struggling with guilt and trauma from his actions and losses in the Trojan War. He walks a fine line between being a mercenary and his own conscience. Dido is the new Queen of a new city, still figuring out both her roles as a leader and herself as a person. Mysticism and fate swirl through and around her -- the fate of the future of the new empire is in her hands.

These three leaders come from different places, but in Carthage they find they have more in common than they originally thought.

High Priest Conus and his followers want to drive everyone out from the desert shores of northern Africa/Carthage. He prepares to rally his people and raise an army of the dead. Bent on revenge, prejudice, anger, and fear lingering from his own past, Conus manipulates all to get what he wants. Now new arrivals must befriend their old enemies and put the past behind them to save their mutual futures.

Romance, adventure, friendship, acceptance, fantasy, and empowerment meet in this exciting novel of conflicted character, life’s changes, losses, connections, and hope. Via is a story of mythology, survival, recovery, love stronger than death, and more.

Yeah, I sort of cribbed some of this from the jacket copy. And filmmakers, no worries about not having enough material: The story is told in two volumes, Via I and Via II.

Via is not one of my books but there is “Clavin” on the cover – because the author is Kathryn Clavin-Vunkannon. My daughter. The just-published Via volumes were many years in the making.

Somehow, during those years, Katy managed to graduate from university, earn a Master’s Degree, work as a social worker and therapist, get married, and this past February, she gave birth to her second daughter. And then Via, with the two volumes combined constituting 574 pages, was released.

I have a birthday coming up on Saturday. It’s not a special one. Not only is turning 47 not significant but I’ve turned 47 so many times by now that it’s lost its glamour. In any case: There is no greater gift than how proud I am of my daughter.

On a slightly related note: I share a birthday with Louise Joy Brown. On July 25 – though in her case, 1978 – the first “test tube baby” was born. Her mother, Lesley Brown, had suffered years of infertility and so an in vitro process was tried. It was successful.

Brown now lives in England with her husband and two children, who were conceived “naturally.” One of her physicians, Robert Edwards, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2010.

Tom Clavin is the bestselling author/co-author of 25 books, the latest being Vengeance: The Last Stands of Custer, Crazy Horse, and Sitting Bull, published by St. Martin’s Press. Please go to your local bookstore or to Bookshop.org, Amazon.com, BN.com, or tomclavin.com to purchase a copy.