Hercules Knot is a forthcoming historical novel set in the sixth century during the reign of Justinian, the last great Roman emperor. The heroine, Eupraxia, known as “Gia,” is born noble but reared far from Constantinople, entirely ignorant of her true identity. If it comes to light, her demise will be sought by multiple, powerful people.
After her mother’s untimely death, Gia’s innocent world of intellectual study in a nunnery within Pantokrator monastery on legendary Mount Ida is upended. She journeys secretly to Constantinople, the Roman empire’s capital and the world’s greatest city. She is welcomed into the upper class but has her own plans. Forced into an arranged marriage she fights against, she is torn between becoming a Bride of Christ or succumbing to her love for Remus, a pagan soldier.
Everything changes in the spring of 542, when the city is entirely overrun with the world’s first pandemic of bubonic plague. On all sides, chaos, death, and horror encroach. Gia seeks the help of her mother’s powerful friends but learns that betrayal lurks everywhere in the capital. She is forced to learn how to survive alone while she grapples with her true identity.
Will the handsome, kind Bishop of Nicaea help Gia understand who she really is? Will he aid her return home to Pantokrator? Or will the palace eunuchs or Remus, the ambitious soldier, come to her aid before the plague strikes her down?
Hercules Knot is an historical novel of love, survival, plague, betrayal, faith, and ambition. The story is undergirded by the great cultural and spiritual tensions between competing Christian and pagan faiths that marked the long transition from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages.
It will be published in fall 2026.
Keep an eye out for a chapter excerpt to be published by late September!