Beloved Exile

Iestyn Mortymer, captured during the chartist Rebellion, is tried at the Monmouth Assizes and sentenced to twenty-one years transportation for crimes against Her Imperial Majesty Queen Victoria. Torn from his young wife Mari, he is exiled to Afghanistan - a country as violated and outraged as his native Wales. On all sides Iestyn witnesses signs of increasing hostility towards the English, and of the crumbling edifice of the Empire. Involved in the appalling 'Afghan Promenade' that cost the British army 17,000 lives, caught up by intrigue, murder and deadly deception, he cannot escape the fact that this is a time when every white face in the country is dubbed an Unbeliever, every redcoat a potential target of violence. Yet, despite everything, there is another escape that he is determined to make. Back to Wales... An epic blend of history and fiction, a swirling canvas of politics, war, servitude and passion, BELOVED EXILE marks the glorious culmination of Alexander Cordell's Welsh sagas.

Guinevere, the widow of King Arthur, with the aid of Lancelot, Gareth, and Bedivere, attempts to unite her people in the wake of the chaos that follows Arthur's death--only to be betrayed and sold into servitude.

From the day the Gospel dawned in the World, Christians have occupied a remarkable place—citizens of heaven, but heirs to the world; loving the world, yet persecuted by the world. A second-century author remarked that Christians are to the world what the soul is to the body. It was people of faith who transformed Greco-Roman civilization and empowered it to thrive. This is the way of believers in every age, “always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested” (2 Cor 4:10). In this book, Catholics in Exile: Biblical Wisdom for the Journey Home, authors Scott Hahn and Brandon McGinley demonstrate that the same power that converted the world in the first century is still converting the world today. Providence is not like a sporting event, or the stock market, or the battlefield, where progress can be measured. But it is more reliable than any measurement we have. The message of this book is at once bracingly realistic and hopeful. Christians today are living in exile. But Christians have always lived as strangers in a strange land—and have nevertheless prevailed. It is a timeless message, but calibrated here precisely for our time.

Rice Bread I was a poor, hungry boy, going to school, on an early morning, of a chilly winter day, needing to grab a bite. You sat on your legs, on the bare kitchen floor, to build a fire with a few stagnant, wet twigs and damp roots, to heat the iron pan to bake a rice-bread for me. You vehemently fought with the heavy smoke for a long while until your eyes moistened; you failed to light the wood, and gave up. The steel pan didn't heat; the rice dough remained untouched. I went to school empty-stomached, shivering, without a bite. I never minded hunger if I only had a dinner last night. I didn't know building a fire was that hard or impossible in a country floating on a lake of oil and gas. Five long and hard decades had passed; with all the riches, plenty milk and honey America can afford, my silk shirts and ties, overseas travels, imported wine, my alms to the needy and exiled, my open house, I still keen for your naked rice bread, for your redolent hugs' warmth in the chilly winter days, under the generous eyes of the immortal sun. I was a tattered, poverty-stricken, half-naked, half-starved, bare-footed lad, yet far away from the savage clash of adamant, civilized swords, the aches of horrendous calamities and atrocities, the evil and hatred of my malevolent, villainous world. In the waterfall of waned memories, I often drown and weep like a hungry, orphan child keening to your cardamom, compassion, and rice-bread. In retrospect, that hunger, poverty, and deprivation taught me tolerance, endurance, to be human after all. I learned never to live for food; "Not only by bread a man lives." I rarely slept without nostalgically and pensively recalling your misfortunate, sorrowful face, your smoke-stifled, withered, tearful eyes, as you vehemently struggled to build a fire.