Levant Mirage exposes more than just fifteen hundred years of religious turmoil. The world faces a grim choice-submit to the demands of terrorists or face mass obliteration. Adam Michaels, son of a jet-setting mother and a heroic Syrian father is exonerated for his part in the bloodiest day of America's longest war. Yet when he returns home, neither forgiveness nor understanding greet him. His ambitious and politically connected wife files for divorce, a conspiracy in the halls of the Pentagon places a target squarely on his back, and a Broadway actress believes she has fallen in love with him. When a secret PhD dissertation is inexplicably declassified, Adam becomes the most hated man in the terrorist's world. Believing he might hold the key to thwart a theocratic society of subjugation, a splinter group of extremists attempt to kidnap or at the very least, kill him. Undercover and often alone, Adam must decide between a failed national policy, a family he has never met, and just staying alive. With a billion lives in the balance as the planet's societies crumble, Adam makes a choice that few understand and fewer will forgive. Taken from the world's daily headlines, the research, people, and places of Levant Mirage are real, even if the work is fiction.
About the Author: Oliver Chase grew up on military bases throughout the country. Like all boys, he played good guys and bad, although usually he favored the good. Coaxing him into an afternoon of baseball or hiking the Southern California hills didn't take much unless a book got in the way. When the time came for his rites of passage, Herb, his best buddy and Oliver joined the Marine Corps to become officers. Herb left school early, even though those were the days of limited options. Not long after, Oliver stepped into sweltering heat on the tarmac not far from where Herb had died from a land mine. Thirty one men flew helicopter gunships in Oliver's small unit. They spent days and nights over the mountains and towns trying to keep the world safe for ... well, that's not really true, is it? The real reason any of them ever went into those mountains at night for an emergency medevac meant an injured buddy. Some of them, Oliver had never even known existed before those long, sleepless nights waiting to fly. After his war, Oliver spent a while wandering. Lots of vets seem to do that, fighting their war all over again, sometimes in hospitals or at home with family, sometimes on the open road. Most found their way back, others did not. Oliver found grad school. A nice, electric model typewriter soon replaced his old Smith Corona portable. If you read the short story "Synonymy" in a Stellar Collection published in 2013, you caught him during that period of his life. He taught on an Indian reservation in New Mexico and later, spent some years with the cops, the feds, and even flying an airplane commercially. All the while, the writing never stopped. The Smith was eventually traded for a Zenith and then a Mac. Before long, even that was exchanged for another PC that still travels in his duffel. He wonders sometimes if the old Smith manual is in the bottom of someone's closet, or maybe on the shelf of a thrift store in Bangkok. A lot of words and karma are stored inside that little machine. Marsh Island and Blind Marsh, published in 2013 and 2014 by the late and great folks of AEC Stellar, New Orleans represented a grand experiment in cooperation and friendship. Pearl River Publishing replaced them for Levant Mirage and later will host Joshua Tree and Bequeathed. Memorable quality and characters are not necessarily the sole province of the acclaimed or the big house.