YOUR BEST SUMMER READ! - THE FOREVER GIRL, By Mike Bonner - Grey Whale Press Productions - This romantic, unsparing, and authentic novel of the destruction of the ancient cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum is a modern take on works such as Bulwer-Lytton's THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. Young Kara is taken into captivity after Roman legionaries and their allies overrun her Rhine River village. Within the space of a few months, she goes from cherished daughter of loving parents to an orphaned and exploited Roman slave. At the age of eight, she is cast adrift in a culture that has little regard for human life-especially a slave's life. But Kara has one asset: Her mane of golden blond hair keeps her alive because of its value in producing the wigs favored by fashionable Roman ladies. Kara is purchased by Agrippina, the wife of the powerful Senator Titus Clodius Eprius Marcellus, for precisely this purpose. As she grows older, Kara is tasked with attending her wealthy Roman family's prized grandson and heir, Justus. Because Kara loves the babe, she is filled with pleasure in this charge. This wins her the love of Marcus, the child's father, but also the hatred of Agrippina, who schemes to consign Kara to a brothel. On the day the fateful eruption occurs, it is the infant Justus Kara risks her life to protect. From Mike Bonner: "My original notes for this historical novel date to the late summer of 1995, when I watched a TV documentary featuring Dr. Sara C. Bisel, "The Bone Lady," who used advanced forensic techniques to study a collection of first century human remains found at Herculaneum in the 1980s. I was entranced by what Dr. Bisel uncovered, and resolved to write a novel about it. But instead of some silly potboiler about swords, shields, and chariot races, I thought I might devote my efforts to describing ancient life as it most likely ACTUALLY was, something I have rarely come across in the media of our shallow modern culture. For in fact, as alien it seems now, the Roman Empire was the prototype for the Western civilization we presently have, twenty centuries later. You wouldn't know it from the distracting influences we are currently accustomed to, but war is terrible and horrifying, reality can be unbearably grim, and it seems a standard condition that powerful human beings should automatically abuse, exploit, enslave, and even murder the weak. It's as true now as it was when Rome ruled a quarter of the Earth's population. Many of the characters herein are based on my own experience, especially from my early life in Portland, Oregon, USA. The bones Dr. Bisel recovered from Herculaneum reveal sad truths about our common origins. THE FOREVER GIRL is intended for young adults, and is a view, based on science, about what our ancient ancestors were really like. I hope readers everywhere enjoy the story."