Plato's Cave

About the Book

Mark Saverra, Greek-American classics professor is the type of guy who figures he’s got life buttoned down. A tenured teaching job at a college in Northern California, a cabin in the woods,. A dog to keep him company. Sure he’s interested in one of his student’s, Helen, a bright, reentry pupil with flashing gray eyes. Trouble is, Mark doesn’t want to get involved. It’s simpler that way--not disturbing the universe. Besides, since his long term relationship with Carla ended, Mark has remained disengaged. So he drifts along, collects his pay, the world of appearances as Plato would describe it floating by.

But then Mark has a dream, a spooky dream that shatters his complacency. Weird--a blood sacrifice, wraithlike Shades hunkered around the gates of Hades, a blind soothsayer about to speak.  The dream, an episode from Homer’s Odyssey?  Seems too  surreal.  Has Mark slipped into a liminal world between his daily reality and myth?  Shaken by the dream Mark now gets enmeshed in a cycle of mysterious events that lead him to Greece in search of an ancient Mycenaean ceremonial sword (some say the very one Agamemnon used to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia) he has been accused of stealing.

Problem is, Antonioni, the Customs agent who accuses Mark and his friend Richard an archaeologist, of swiping the sword may not be an agent after all. At least not according to the epicene A. R. Synge, supposed antiquities dealer who travels with a woman half his age, Jayne Harrison.  Something odd about her, though. Aloof; like a piece of dry ice, cold unless you get to close.

Then there’s the beefy guy who sits in on Mark’s class one day. Just interested in the classics he says. Is he?  Or is he another player in the high stakes search after the missing sword.  Sure looks like it, especially after a thug fitting his description beats up Synge while Mark and Jayne are off on a bicycle ride.

Mark travels to L.A. to confront Richard. He takes the train. The throb of steel on steel is mesmerizing. Just like the woman he meets, Margarita Luna, who comes on a bit too strong, then suddenly vanishes after admonishing Mark not to forsake the Moon Goddess. On a beach in L.A., Richard takes another toke off his Rizla-wrapped reefer, puts away his cigarette case embossed with the Byzantine double-headed eagle. There is no missing  sword, Richard swears. It’s safely tucked away in the Mycenaean tholos tomb, buried under an avalanche of rocks, an excavation accident.

Mark unconvinced, suspects his old college friend is lying.  Just an uneasy feeling. Can you trust a one-eyed jack, and a reality not unlike Plato’s Cave, illusory and shadowy, where nothing appears as it truly is.

So Mark flies to Greece, accepts a cushy job teaching at the summer school Richard has set up in Galaxidi, birthplace of Mark’s father.  Zorba and all that stuff?  Not really.  Mark has his hang-ups--jarring memories of his bicultural upbringing, the repressed melancholic mother, the distant, overbearing father.  If anything Greece should be a good place to work all that out.

But whoa!  What’s the beefy guy doing in Greece following Mark around?  And who’s that other guy, the creepy one with the Ray Ban wraparound shades?

Then Synge and Jayne show up, want Mark to help them break into the Mycenaean tomb. Mark says he’ll think it over.  But Miss Harrison, as Synge addresses her, is hard to turn down, especially when she’s teased Mark into the shower one hot Athenian afternoon...

About the Author

Paris Mentis has led the roustabout life of a writer. Born in New York of Greek immigrant parents, he grew up in the Midwest where he attended the University of Iowa, receiving a Master’s degree in history. He migrated west, traveled throughout Europe and Mexico, hopped freights, hitchhiked, taught school, worked a stint in the merchant marine. He has lived and traveled extensively in Greece, seeking out antiquities and sacred sites. Trains and tramp steamers are his favorite means of transportation. Currently he resides in the mountains of Northern California, where he writes, reads, listens to classical music; and basks at his favorite summer lake where he contemplates a magic mountain which soars to Olympian heights.