Hidden In Xanadu

About the Book

HIDDEN IN XANADU is the story of suspended rules, the outward serenity and inner chaos of two ordinary people who are thrust into the world of crime witnesses and how they devise an imaginative way to live through it. Colleagues, GRACE DANVERS and MAX JOSEFS, witness a horrible crime and are whisked into protective custody by the FBI to contain the contamination of their testimony before trial. So abruptly has their world changed that Max and Grace feel as if they are in another reality; the constant companionship of the agents seems more like an invasion of privacy than protection; their custody more like captivity. To gain some control over their lives and blot out the ever-present, gruesome crime, they devise a game with their own rules and title the rules file Xanadu.

Max and Grace have made several documentaries together and are attracted to each other. In their fifties, both are embarrassed about making love with each other, know it will change their friendship irrevocably. They devise a game to become other couples in fiction and history to get past this sticking point. Neither is aware the agents listen to every word and action.

Grace, close to the breaking point, discovers the agents' listening, their complete violation. Max falls back on their game to save her and Grace finds the strength to rise above the betrayal. Their captivity and the game not only change their lives but the lives of the agents and enable Grace to testify at trial.

About the Author

JACQUELINE JACOVA HAND was raised in Illinois and lived in Paris, London and Los Angeles. She has written all her life, everything from newspaper columns, television concepts, screenplays, plays for children, to investigative reporting, but waited until she felt she had accumulated knowledge and understanding before she wrote her first novel at sixty. She taught screenwriting, writing for children, and English literature at colleges in the Southwest. She was the owner/editor/columnist of a newspaper in Pagosa Springs, Colorado. Her column, "The Last Angry Woman," was read in the White House. Now sixty-seven, HIDDEN IN XANADU is her first published novel.