With the Gestapo pounding on every door, no Jew in Athens is safe.At the start of ODYSSEY OF CHAOS, Theo Kantos, a dress shop owner, has a desperate choice to make if he is to save his family. Does he trust the most despicable man he knows to hide them? Or does he place the lives of those he loves in the hands of a communist? And what does he do about his obsti-nate brother who always has to have the last word?Nearly 90% of Greece's Jews perished in the Holocaust, the highest percentage lost in any country. ODYSSEY OF CHAOS was inspired by the true story of the author's Greek cousins who survived hidden in a cellar by a shepherd. Other cousins joined the partisan resistance. And others died in Auschwitz. SIX CONTEMPORARY SHORT STORIES follow the title novella. All are about dramatic events and choices that alter the course of lives and form who we are.
About the Author: Today my wife Ann and I live with our Siberian cat, Pasha, high on a hill overlooking San Francisco Bay. Prior to beginning my writing career, I was a marketing consultant, senior corporate executive, university adjunct faculty, corporate board member, community volunteer, and an officer in the U.S. Army. Then at a time when most people are retiring, I began this new vocation as a novelist. Here's why. My father Ben was born in the Ukraine amidst the worst of the Russian Tsar's bloody 1905 anti-Jewish riots - pogroms. Shortly after, my grandfather Max escaped with his family to America. A hundred years later, I returned to the Ukraine. I paid my respects at a tombstone honoring the victims of the 1905 pogroms and stood in the square where the Nazis in 1941 rounded up thousands of Jews and marched them off to be executed. Had my grandparents not left Russia when they did, I might well have died in a square just like that one. My yearning to connect with these grandparents I never knew arose in those moments. Writing novels seemed to be the only means for me to satisfy that passion. This led to my first book, Goliath's Head, then to A Fine September Morning, and finally to Lara's Shadow. With the same passion born of gratitude, my latest book, Odyssey of Chaos, turns attention to my maternal grandparents. They came to America from Greece in the early Twentieth Century. However, most of my grandmother's family stayed behind, ultimately settling in Athens. That's where they were when the Germans invaded Greece in 1941 and occupied their city and country. Odyssey of Chaos tells the story of Jews caught in Nazi-occupied Athens, the Christian Greeks who tried to save them, and those who betrayed them. So many stories have been told of the Holocaust that we have become numb to the horror of it. But for me, it's personal. My Greek cousins were among the handful of Greek Jews who survived. Nearly ninety percent of them were lost to the tragedy, the highest percentage in any country. Together, my four books form a chronicle of the 20th century Jewish journey, from oppression to tragedy to triumph.