Author June Trop gives some insight into the world of alchemy…
ALCHEMY: A SERIOUS BUSINESS
Perhaps to you the word “alchemy” conjures up images of sinister laboratories, black-robed sorcerers, or even quackery. Still, for thousands of years, the most accomplished intellectuals of their time, such as Isaac Newton, studied alchemy earnestly. Even now its study continues through the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry [SHAC], founded in 1935. Surely something studied for so many thousands of years is a serious business.
Until the nineteenth century, alchemists like the one in the painting here, were hanged on gilded gallows dressed in grotesque gold robes. Otherwise, they faced imprisonment and torture until they divulged their secrets. The promise of gold has always been a serious business.
In the Roman Empire during the first-century CE, the setting of my Miriam bat Isaac Mystery Series, all alchemists wrote under the name of a deity, prophet, or philosopher from an earlier time – perhaps to enhance the authenticity of their claims, but certainly to shield themselves from persecution. Amid accusations of cheating their clients, destabilizing the currency, or worst yet, of financing the overthrow of the Empire, they could be arrested, tortured, and executed. The Romans certainly took the business of alchemy seriously.
No wonder in THE DEADLIEST HATE, Miriam ventures to Caesarea to trace an alchemical document. Can she discover its provenance while eluding assassins and protecting a secret of her own? Be serious. Find out. Read THE DEADLIEST HATE.
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A Miriam bat Isaac Mystery, Book 2
Winner of Honorable Mention for fiction in the 2016 New York Book Festival.
The Roman Empire may be the least of her enemies.
A secret alchemical recipe to transmute copper into gold surfaces in first-century CE Caesarea. As soon as Miriam sets out to trace the leak, Judean terrorists target her for assassination. Eluding the assassins while protecting a secret of her own, she discovers that she, herself, is responsible for the leak. Moreover she is powerless to stop its spread throughout the Empire and beyond.
But who is really trying to kill Miriam? Is it a case of mistaken identity, or is her late-fiancé’s ex-scribe, now an assistant to the Procurator of Judea, seeking to avenge an old grudge? Or is her heartthrob’s half-brother, a Judean patriot who inherited his mother’s mania, afraid Miriam knows too much?
And how did the recipe find its way from Alexandria to Caesarea anyway?
June Trop (Zuckerman) has had over forty years of experience as an award-winning teacher and educator. Now associate professor emerita at the State University of New York at New Paltz, she spends her time breathlessly following her intrepid protagonist, Miriam bat Isaac, who is back in the underbelly of Alexandria, once again searching for a murderer in The Deadliest Sport while worrying about her brother. junetrop.com
