Homer

American Odyssey and the Odyssey: Two Sagas of a Warrior Tested by the Gods on the Long Journey Home Homer

About American Odyssey

In millennia long past, Ulysses battled the fates to return to the home and family he loved.

Little changes.

Now, Leo Lewis?though his war was in Afghanistan, not Troy?finds the same gods and goddesses arrayed behind him and against him.

In spirited writing both sly and sublime, R. Douglas Clark captures the essence of the warrior?s journey. Today?s way home lies not across the Mediterranean but instead becomes the great American road trip?towns unknown, adventures unimagined, people strange and loving. As mortals shape Leo?s experiences for better or worse, so, too, do the gods.

The novel is an original, one man?s struggle to find a way for the byroads of the continent to heal his horrors and deal with his demons. As it unfold, Clark?s tale of this solitary, damaged Marine becomes the story of a million other veterans taking the ?long drive home.?

Tested by a pantheon of self-serving yet sometimes-compassionate gods, Leo finds a journey full of twists and turns, with the abiding lesson that no one should presume to know his own fate?and survival is just as uncertain as it ever was amid the combat and chaos of Kandahar.

About The Odyssey

The Trojan War is over. The victorious heroes have returned home?except for Ulysses. For he has incurred the wrath of mighty Poseidon, and the god of the seas and storms will have his revenge.

Trapped in the lovely clutches of the beautiful nymph Calypso, captive of the giant Cyclops Polyphemus, compelled to journey into Hades?Ulysses struggles on for ten long years, while home in Ithaca, suitors for the hand of his wife Penelope have taken over his palace and feast on his wealth.

It is a tale that has survived through the ages, driven by the power of its story and the fascination of the interplay among its characters, both human and divine, all brought vitally to life in this translation by noted author and classical scholar Samuel Butler.