Where the Rivers Meet: A Novel

WHERE THE RIVERS MEET is a novel of friendship and spiritual quest. Twenty-two year old David Blake, having left his home on Maryland's Eastern Shore to live in Paris, undertakes a journey to Morocco.  After a near death experience he finds himself temporarily blind as a guest in the home of a wealthy Berber merchant in Marrakesh. During his two-year disappearance from all he has previously known, he undergoes aspiritual transformation in which he faces both new companionships and dangers. Escaping in the disguise of a snake charmer, he returns to France where he meets a wandering Iraqi poet whose friendship determines the future of his life. As the poet Badr resolves to return to Iraq, David reconciles with his family and life in Maryland. His journey resumes, however, after the death of his friend, and extends to the politically dangerous world of Iraq but also the mythical and mystical worlds of Gilgamesh and Al-Hallaj. An unexpected invitation from a Japanese scholar whom he meets in Baghdad brings him to the world of the poet Basho in Kyoto and Ise, Japan. It is there that he discovers love and the spiritual resolution of his quest.