THE ANGEL SCROLL
THE ANGEL SCROLL
Penelope Holt
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
GENRE: Spiritual Romance, Mystery/Thriller
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BLURB:
ONE ANCIENT PROPHECY, TWO HEARTBROKEN LOVERS, AND A WORLDWIDE SCAVENGER HUNT FOR THREE MIRACULOUS PAINTINGS.
After her husband’s death, New York artist Claire Lucas has baffling dreams and waking visions as she channels an enigmatic and healing painting of a holy man in India at the deathbed of a young woman. When widowed antiquarian Richard Markson announces that Claire’s canvas is one-third of three paintings prophesied by the Angel Scroll, a recently discovered Dead Sea parchment, she is pulled into an international scavenger hunt to find the stolen scroll and the paintings it predicts.
As she pursues the paintings with Richard across historic and holy sites in America, Israel, and Europe, Claire encounters a series of remarkable teachers. A Buddhist, a Benedictine monk, and a professor of early goddess worship all provide rich explanations for the artist’s compelling and perplexing psychic experiences — until she assembles the incredible triptych and deciphers its inspirational message for the modern world.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
EXCERPT
In Benares, India, the sweltering night dragged on. Moonlight slid through the bedroom window and bathed the young, Christlike figure who sat cross-legged on the floor. Only a loincloth covered his slender hips, and his long, coarse hair was coiled in a topknot on his crown. He’d been watching the young woman on the low bed for hours. She was feverish, her breathing shallow, as she squinted at him now through half- closed lids. Her husband held her hand and shot the young man a pleading look. “Please let her live. I’m a rich man. I can pay you. I can help the poor of Benares, the poor of India.”
“To thwart death is not to conquer it,” the young master said, and the husband buried his head in the bed’s embroidered cover. In a single, fluid movement, the holy man rose and stroked his host’s bent head, His long, graceful fingers raking the dark hair, slick with perfumed oil, revealing a channel of pale, moist scalp.
Beyond the bedroom, in the narrow hallway, the master found his three companions propped against a wall and dozing. He tapped the closest with a calloused foot, and one by one the sleeping men awoke. “Is she well now?” the tall one asked, stretching.
“She will be dead come dawn,” his master whispered, as the four men stepped into the dusty and deserted Indian night.
The phone rang. Claire woke up and realized her face was wet. She’d been crying again. She eyed the clock—9 a.m. She cleared her throat, picked up the phone, and tried to sound awake. “Hello?”
“You still sleeping?” Claire held the phone away from her ear to stop Deirdre Vetch’s whine from piercing her brain. “You’re coming to the gallery to talk about the painting, right? We must talk.” Deirdre’s verbal pummeling began.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
AUTHOR Bio and Links:
Penelope Holt was born and educated in England and now lives in New York. She is a novelist, playwright, business writer, and marketing executive, whose work has been performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, York Arts Center, and New York’s American Folk Theater. In addition to writing fiction, The Angel Scroll, and The Apple, based on the controversial Herman Rosenblat Holocaust romance, Holt is a prolific writer, editor, and co-author of non-fiction, including Business Intelligence at Work A Personal Operating System for Career Success, Singing God’s Work, the story of the Harlem Gospel Choir, and many other works. She is married with two children.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
RAFFLECOPTER GIVEAWAY
One randomly chosen winner via rafflecopter will win a $25 Amazon/BN.com gift card.
Enter to win a $25 Amazon/BN GC – a Rafflecopter giveaway
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Q & A With …
Have you ever had an imaginary friend?
No, but I talk to myself, lost loved ones, a higher power, and any benign forces that might be watching over me.
Do you have any phobias?
Not really. When my son was a baby, I used to panic every Sunday night at the thought of strapping him into his car seat and traveling a treacherous stretch of I95 to get him to daycare. Come Monday morning, the panic was gone and it was business as usual—only for the same panic to return every Sunday night. I’m also not a fan of camping and adventures in the woods, where snakes and creepy crawlies slither and skitter around, and strange noises and things that go bump in the night set the nerves on edge. Lots of respect for those who commune with the scarier side of nature.
Do you listen to music when you’re writing?
Not usually. I like to write in complete silence. I seem to need quiet to concentrate. I was asked to turn the novel into a screenplay and while doing that, I was moved to listen to classical guitar recordings, and Gregorian chant, which features in a scene set in Dormition Abbey in Jerusalem’s Old City.
Do you ever read your stories out loud?
I mostly read them in my head, but I will read out loud to hear if a certain cadence is working and hopefully working a spell.
Tell us about your main character and who inspired him/her.
In The Angel Scroll, Claire Lucas, a Manhattan-based painter, is grieving the unexpected loss of her young husband. She is plagued by strange visions and dreams that compel her to channel an enigmatic masterpiece of a Christlike figure at the deathbed of a young woman in India, which instantly becomes a healing and celebrated work that draws crowds.
Claire soon meets and is immediately but reluctantly attracted to an antiquarian, Richard Markson. As she joins him on a worldwide scavenger hunt for two other miraculous paintings, foretold by a prophecy in a recently discovered Dead Sea Scroll, she embarks on a journey that explores life’s biggest questions: life after death, faith, and spiritual transformation. Claire, a skeptic and seeker, faces supernatural experiences that challenge her belief system. Alongside characters like a Benedictine monk, a professor of mysticism, an anthropologist, and a Buddhist monk, Claire explores various metaphysical ideas and spiritual beliefs.
As Claire confronts a spiritual crisis, she must navigate conflicting answers from different traditions and belief systems to uncover the truth behind her supernatural experiences and move from profound grief to new love.
