Novel, Romance

Iraq is the center of a global, political maelstrom as the winds of war blow, and the arbitrary cruelty of henchmen and despots sweep through the lives of innocent people. This is the backdrop against which The Reckoning is set; a wrenching and provocative tale of one woman's homecoming gone very wrong. Journalist Theresa Fuller has epilepsy, but this hasn't slowed her search for stories of injustice to broadcast to the world. When she and her cameraman, Peter Cranston, are captured inside Iraq in August 2002, and imprisoned by the Mukhabarat, Iraq's secret police, she is cut off from her medication. Seizures resume, and dreams and visions of her childhood in Baghdad begin to haunt her. Tormented by the relentless Colonel Badr, she is forced to focus on her own father's death, years before in a Baghdad prison. The strain of her own captivity, and torture, is relieved only by her growing attraction to Tariq al-Awali, the Iraqi captain who took charge of her capture. The more she learns of him and his family, the clearer her troubling dreams become, and the more puzzling her past. Before the American bombs begin to fall, and all of Iraq is thrown into even darker chaos, Theresa must find a way to escape the cruelty of Colonel Badr, and save those she cares for most. (Publisher website)