It’s been a while since I’ve posted an excerpt from my novel-in-process Tower of Ivory, so I thought I’d give you, my readers, a chance to read the first paragraphs, in which our hero, John Lorran, arrives at the INA, the eponymous white tower:

It was at that time that the tide of darkness was first turned back, a time of heroes and saints, of legends. The greatest of these legends begins far in the north of the world, where a young man struggles for the fulfillment of his great destiny and the fate of the world itself… (Catholic Encyclopedia 117^th Edition)

The waves crashed forlornly against a bare rocky isle in the North Atlantic. Well, at least against what should have been a bare isle, if the fate of the world had been different. For clearly visible against the sky was a lofty white tower. In fact, standing on the deck of the approaching transport, the tower became visible long before the island.

Such was the view of a fifteen year old boy whose brown hair was the same color as his intelligent eyes with which he viewed for the first time this lonely section of the northern ocean. A look of caution was plain on his face as his thoughts turned toward home and all he knew…