Michael Foster

The Serpent's Kiss Michael Foster

The Serpent's Kissby Michael FosterThe Serpent's Kiss is the enthralling power struggle of love and war set during Colonial times, the most crucial and colorful period of the American pageant. The exploration, conflicts, and cultures of the French and Indian War (1754 - 63) invented America, a new country more ethnically diverse and open to opportunity than anything the world had seen. Our birth has shaped our institutions and collective emotions to this day. The Serpent's Kiss, classically written and carefully researched, is brimming with sensuality featuring the roles actually played by women, Indians, blacks, Irish soldiers, German farmers, Jewish merchants, religious sects, and personalities such as George Washington, Ben Franklin, Major General Edward Braddock, Commander of British armies in North America, Shingas, Teedyuscung and Daniel Boone. The love/hate relationship between the British, French, and Indians, bear a striking resemblance to our time. Bloody wilderness warfare, Evangelical revival, savage sexuality, and gracious homes and manners all went hand in hand. Life was often short but thrilling at a time when epidemic disease was rampant and torture and terror acceptable means of conquest. Robin Sayer, the bright, pampered son of a famous actress, is saved from the gallows by Joanna Dove, a darkly beautiful, charismatic preacher of "the end of days" and our story's main woman character. Joanna, part-Indian, with flowing dark hair, a temptress with golden eyes, is based on an actual women preacher of the 18th century. The historic revival that she embodies-- the so-called Great Awakening-- alarmingly anticipates the fundamentalism rising in America today. Like certain of our contemporary preachers, politicians, and media giants, Joanna's apocalyptic vision gets tangled with her simmering sexuality.