by Carol Ashby
Glossary
aureus: gold coin worth 25 denarii
cisium: two-wheeled cart with forward-facing seat located above the axis
corbita: merchant ship, typical size 90 feet long, 25 feet wide with one large sail midship and a second small angled sail in the bow
cursus honorum: “course of honors,” the sequence of military and political offices held by men of the senatorial order
denarius: coin equal to about one day’s wage for a worker.
dies solis: Sunday
freedman: a former slave who still owes service to his former master
gladius: short Roman sword used by legionaries
lanista: the head trainer in charge of a gladiator school (ludus)
ludus: a school for training gladiators, who could be rented for tasks needing the threat of force
mille passus (milia passuum): Roman mile (miles) = 0.92 English miles or 1.48 km
operae: specific duties, such as a certain number of hours of service, owed by a freed slave to the master who freed him and that former master’s heir
palla: woman’s large rectangular shawl (60 x 120 inches) worn wrapped around the body and sometimes over the head
paterfamilias: legal head of a Roman family with absolute control over all his children, even when grown or married.
peregrine: a person who is not a Roman citizen
praetor: a judge in the Roman court system; the second level magistrate in the cursus honorum
quadrans: smallest denomination Roman coin worth 1/64 denarius
raeda: a four-wheeled closed-in carriage
second table: the dessert (third) course of a three-course Roman dinner
salve: hello
sestertius: coin worth 1/4 denarius
stola: a long robe worn by married women fastened by clasps at the shoulder and worn over a tunic
tabula: a popular backgammon-like game
vale: goodbye
Scripture References
Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by Permission of Biblica, Inc.® All rights reserved worldwide.
Chapter 13: Luke 8:22-25 (NIV)
Chapter 21: Luke 9:18-27 (NIV)
Chapter 23: Luke 11:9-13 (NIV)
Chapter 25: Luke 8:5-15 (NIV)
Chapter 34: Luke 9:23-27 (NIV)
Chapter 39: Romans 8:28-32 (NIV)
Chapter 48: Luke 9:22-27 (NIV)
Acknowledgements
First, I thank God for this opportunity to tell a story of how He can take the sad times of our lives and use them to open doors to happiness we never dreamed possible. I loved writing the story of the healing of Hector’s broken heart, the joy he found watching the people he’d grown to love accept Jesus, and the opening of Cornelia’s eyes to the love of God and the unimportance of the things she’d been raised to value. There’s nothing more satisfying that writing about lives being transformed by forgiveness and love.
Writing the best book I can is only possible with the help of many others. It’s with a mixture of joyful remembrances and deep sadness that I thank Regina Fujitani for being my alpha beta reader and dear friend. Despite many health problems, she kept sharing her knowledge of good writing, her spiritual insight, and her warmth until a few days before she died. She’s helped me with all of Blind Ambition, The Legacy, Faithful, and Second Chances plus a few sections of the next two in the series. I do so wish she would be here to help bring those to completion as well, but she’s dancing with Jesus now, and who wouldn’t rather be doing that than reading draft manuscripts?
I’m especially thankful for my kindred spirit and treasured friend, Lisa Garcia, who’s a great beta reader who understands the human heart and is so good at spotting typos that I’ll never need a copy editor. Andrew Budek-Schmeisser shared his invaluable male perspective and impressive writing skill as a fellow author. There were no combat scenes in Second Chances, but since I like to work on the future volumes of the series at the same time, he’s already helped me with the action scenes in the next two volumes.
My critique partner, Katie Powner, who’s an award-winning author herself, helped me spot and fix things only an author would see.
Many thanks to my friends who read shorter sections, looked at draft covers, and gave me helpful feedback: Terry Shoebotham, Brennan McPherson, Patti Stouter.
My line editor, Wendy Chorot, has blessed me with her skill as an editor and with her insights for making the deep spiritual scenes reflect real life. She’s a joy to work with as well. If you need a great editor, she’s the one to call.
Yet again, Roseanna White has designed a gorgeous cover that captures the time and the theme of the Light in the Empire series. It takes amazing talent to start with a collection of separate images and meld them together to get something that looks like the Romans had color photography. Once more, she came up with a design that’s attractive to both men and women. I can’t wait to see what she does with the next two in the series. I keep thinking she can’t make the next one better, but she always does.
I especially want to thank my wonderful son, Paul, and my beautiful daughter, Lydia, for their love and patience with my obsession with writing. I give special thanks to Lydia, who posed in the Roman woman’s costume I made for the American Christian Fiction Writers’ genre dinner in 2017. That’s her body but not her head as Cornelia on the cover.
But my special thanks go to my long-suffering husband, Jim, who kept me company by watching movies until 2 a.m. when I was on a roll writing and brought me dinner at my desk when I couldn’t tear myself away from the keyboard. He’s smart, funny, kind, patient…in short, he inspires the best parts of my heroes. I don’t need a second chance to find happiness because I got the best man the first time around.
About the Author
Carol Ashby has been a professional writer for most of her life, but her articles and books were about lasers and compound semiconductors (the electronics that make cell phones, laser pointers, and LED displays work). She still writes about light, but her Light in the Empire series tells stories of difficult friendships and life-changing decisions in dangerous times, where forgiveness and love open hearts to discover their own faith in Christ. Her fascination with the Roman Empire was born during her first middle-school Latin class. A research career in New Mexico inspires her to get every historical detail right so she can spin stories that make her readers feel like they’re living under the Caesars themselves.
Read her articles about many facets of life in the Roman Empire at carolashby.com, or join her at her blog, The Beauty of Truth, at carol-ashby.com.
The Light in the Empire Series
Dangerous times, difficult friendships, lives transformed by forgiveness and love.
The Light in the Empire Series follows the interconnected lives of four Roman families during the reigns of Trajan and Hadrian. Join them as they travel the Empire, from Germania and Britannia to Thracia, Dacia, and Judaea and, of course, to Rome itself.
Available in paperback and Kindle versions at Amazon,
epub version at Kobo and in paperback and Nook versions at Barnes&Noble.
Forgiven
Are some wounds too deep to forgive?
With a ruthless father who murdered for the family inheritance, Marcus Drusus plans to do the same. In AD 122, Marcus follows his brother Lucius to Judaea and plots to frame a zealot for his older brother’s death. But the plan goes awry, and Lucius is rescued by a Messianic Jewish woman. Her oldest brother is a zealot and a Roman soldier killed her twin, but Rachel still persuades her father Joseph to put his love for Jesus above his anger with Rome and hide Lucius until he heals.
Rachel cares for the enemy, and more than broken bones heal as duty turns to love. Lucius embraces Joseph’s faith in Jesus, but sharing a faith doesn’t heal all wounds. Even before revealed secrets slice ope
n old scars, Joseph wants no Roman son-in-law. With Rachel’s zealot brother suspecting he’s a Roman officer and his own brother planning to kill him when he returns, can Lucius survive long enough to change Joseph’s mind?
Available in paperback and Kindle versions at Amazon,
epub version at Kobo and in paperback and Nook versions at Barnes&Noble.
Blind Ambition
Sometimes you have to almost die to discover how you want to live.
It’s AD 114 in the Roman province of Germania Superior, and being a Christian carries a death sentence. Tribune Decimus Lentulus is on the fast track for a stellar political career back in Rome. When he’s robbed, blinded, and left for dead, a young German woman who follows the Way finds him. Valeria knows it’s his duty to have her and her family killed, but she chooses to obey Jesus’s command to love her enemy and takes him home to care for him.
It’s not his miraculous recovery that shakes Decimus to his core. It’s the way they love him like family and their unconcealed love for Jesus. In spite of himself, he falls in love with the Christian woman Rome wants him to kill. Can Valeria hide her faith to follow him into the circles of Roman power? Or should he abandon his ambition to help rule the Empire and choose to follow a different way?
Available in paperback and Kindle versions at Amazon,
epub version at Kobo and in paperback and Nook versions at Barnes&Noble.
The Legacy
When Rome has taken everything, what’s left for a man to give?
Betrayed by a ruthless son who’ll do anything for power and wealth, Publius Drusus faces death with an unanswered prayer―that his treasured daughter, Claudia, and honorable son, Titus, will someday share his faith. But who will lead them to the truth once he’s gone?
Claudia’s oldest brother Lucius arranged their father’s execution to inherit everything, and now he’s forcing her to marry a cruel Roman power broker. If only she could get to Titus―a thousand miles away in Thracia. Then the man who secretly told her father about Jesus arranges for his son Philip to sneak her out of Rome and take her to the brother she can trust.
A childhood accident scarred Philip’s face. A woman’s rejection scarred his heart. Claudia’s gratitude grows into love, but what can Philip do when the first woman who returns his love hates the God he loves even more?
Titus and Claudia hunger for revenge on their brother and the Christians they blame for their father’s deadly conversion. When Titus buys Miriam, a secret Christian, to serve his sister, he starts them all down a path of conflicting loyalties and dangerous decisions. His father’s final letter commands the forgiveness Titus refuses to give. What will it take to free him from the hatred poisoning his own heart?
Join the people you met in Second Chances eight years earlier in this tale of betrayal, hatred, love, and forgiveness, where even bad things can work together for good.
Available in paperback and Kindle versions at Amazon,
epub version at Kobo and in paperback and Nook versions at Barnes&Noble.
Faithful
Is the price of true friendship ever too high?
In AD 122, Adela, the fiery daughter of a Germanic chieftain, is kidnapped and taken across the Roman frontier to be sold as a slave. When horse-trader Otto wins her while gambling with her kidnappers, he entrusts her to his friend and trading partner, Galen. Then Otto is kidnapped by the same men, and Galen must track them half way across the Empire before his best friend loses a fight to the death in a Roman arena.
Adela joins Galen in the chase, hungry for vengeance. As the perilous journey deepens their friendship, will the kind, faithful man open her eyes to a life she never dreamed she’d want?
A trip to the heart of the Empire poses mortal danger to a man who follows Jesus, especially when he must seek the help of an enemy of the faith for Otto to survive. Tiberius hunted Christians when he governed Germania Superior and banished his own son when he became one.
When Tiberius learns sparing Galen offers a chance at reconciliation, he joins the trio on their journey home. Can his animosity toward the followers of Jesus survive a trip with the Christian man whose courage and faithfulness demand his respect?
Follow the continuing saga of the people you met in Blind Ambition from the frontier of Germany to the heart of the Empire.
Coming in 2019
True Freedom
The chains we cannot see can be the hardest ones to break.
When Aulus runs up a crushing debt gambling with his father’s political enemy, he’s desperate to pay it off before his father returns to Rome. All seems hopeless until his best friend Marcus suggests they fake the kidnapping of Aulus’s sister Livia and use the ransom to pay his debt. But when the kidnappers decide they can make more money selling Livia into slavery, Aulus is catapulted into a desperate search to find her and bring her home before his father's return.
Torn from his childhood home by Rome’s conquering armies and sold as a farm slave to labor until he dies, Dacius’s faith gives him strength to bear what he must and serve without complaining. After a deadly accident makes him one of Livia’s litter bearers, he overhears Marcus advising her brother to kidnap her. When Dacius almost dies thwarting the kidnapping, a Christian couple pretend Livia and Dacius are their children to keep her brother from finding them before her father returns.
But pretending to be free again makes returning to slavery more than Dacius can bear, while acting like a common woman opens Livia’s eyes to dreams and destinies she never knew existed. With her brother closing in and her father almost home, can Livia find a way around Roman law and custom to free them both for the future they long for?
I’d Love to Hear from You!
I’d love to hear what you think of Second Chances
If you enjoyed this book, I would really appreciate it if you would post a review at the retailer you purchased it from and at Goodreads. A good review is like a jewel set in gold for an author.
I’d also love to hear what you liked most about Second Chances at carol-ashby.com or at [email protected].
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What should the future hold for Marcus Brutus?
In a militaristic society where it was considered a good afternoon’s entertainment to watch men fight to the death, Marcus Brutus is an honorable man in a brutal business, callous but not cruel, a man who treats his slaves like the men they are but is perfectly comfortable with making money off their deaths. Brutus will return in Spring of 2019 in True Freedom, a story set four years before Faithful. But I haven’t yet decided what Brutus’s ultimate end will be. Will he continue on his present path, or choose a different way? I’d love to hear what you think. Please go to my website, carol-ashby.com and share your thoughts in the comment box. Looking forward to hearing from you!