Secured in Stone

Daring heroes and ruthless villains, and among them, women who do not wait around helplessly to be rescued.

In the 1600s, a failed invasion of Europe escalates a secret war between those who preserve and those who destroy our knowledge of ancient history. At the center of the conflict is a mysterious book from the past, and neither side knows what it means or exactly what's at stake if it is decoded. When the book goes missing, the warring factions wage a multi-generational struggle to possess it:

August 1680--a traveling cook is taken beneath the ruins of an Alsatian castle, where he is entrusted with the ancient book. He wishes only to return to his family, but for as long as he guards the book, dangerous men want him dead.

October 1683--a survivor of the Battle of Vienna has lost all, including his dream of conquering Alsace and establishing a new homeland for his people. Before his loss, he viewed the ancient book as a trophy. Now he believes it contains a secret that can change the past, and for this slender hope of bringing back his people, he will slay an entire order of knights to find the book that they protect.

June 1690--a Native American girl is just becoming a woman, but already she has lived three ways. Born to people on the Texas coast, she was abducted by men in La Salle's expedition. She grew up among the foreigners and she learned to read their books. After the fort was destroyed and the remaining French were massacred, she returned to the coast. When a Spanish expedition comes to retrieve French children who were taken captive, she understands their foreign language, and she overhears the terrible deception by which her tribe and the Spaniards are pitted against each other for the sake of a library.

April 1819--a former French soldier, condemned to death after the fall of Napoleon, is on an important mission in the Texas Hill Country. He must decide if a treasure trove is worth more than the lives of enemies, loyal friends, and a beautiful Native American woman who saved him from a horrible demise. Under threat from an unknown enemy, and suspecting a traitor in his own camp, he finally discovers that he is more important to the mission than he was told, for a reason he never could have imagined.