Book description
526 BC and the empire of the Pharaohs is dying, crumbling under the
weight of its own antiquity. Corruption and decay cripple its cities,
infects its leaders and cripples its armies, while across the great
expanse of Sinai, like jackals drawn to carrion, the forces of the
omnipotent king of Persia watch and wait...
But all is not quite lost. For leading the fiight to preserve the
soul of Egypt is the Phoenician warrior, Hasdrabal Barca, the
pharaoh's deadliest killer - possessor of a rage few men can fathom
and fewer can withstand. But the defection of one of Egypt's most
celebrated generals, the Greek mercenary Phanes, to the Persians
triggers a savage war that will test Barca's military skills and his
humanity to the limit. But Barca is changing - a girl who was once a
slave but with a gift for healing - tends to his wounds, and as she
does so, eases his tortured soul and teaches him how to be truly human
again.
From the political wastelands of Palestine and the searing deserts
east of the Nile to the streets of the ancient city of Memphis, Barca
and Phanes play a desperate and brutal game of cat-and-mouse that
culminates in the bloodiest battle of Egypt's history. In the dusty
hills east of Pelusium, a reckoning will unfold, for there over the
dead of two nations, Hasdrabal Barca will face the same choice of as
those great heroes of old: death and eternal fame, or long life and obscurity...
Scott Oden was born in Columbus, Indiana, in 1967. The youngest of
five, he was raised in rural North Alabama, near Huntsville, where he
still resides. Scott's fascination with Egypt and the ancient world
began in 1976, when his third-grade teacher showed the class slides from
the travelling Tutankhamun exhibit. He studied history and English at
Calhoun College and the University of Alabama before pursuing the usual
variety of odd jobs - from delivering pizza to working in the bindery of
a printing company to clerking at a video store.
Men of Bronze
is his first novel.
