Cleopatra's Heir » (Reprint)

Gillian Bradshaw's father, an American Associated Press newsman, met her mother, a confidential secretary for the British embassy, in Rio de Janeiro. She was born in Washington DC in 1956, the second of four children. They didn't move around quite as much as one might expect after such a beginning: Washington was followed merely by Santiago, Chile, and two locations in Michigan. Gillian attended the University of Michigan, where she earned her BA in English and another in Classical Greek, and won the Hopwood Prize for fiction with her first novel, Hawk of May. She went on to get another degree at Newnham College, Cambridge University, England in Greek and Latin literature, and she sold her first novel while preparing for exams.

She decided to stay in Cambridge another year to write another novel and think about what to do for a Real Job. However, while there, she discovered she could live on her income as a novelist and also met her husband, who was completing his doctorate in physics. Between books and children she never did get a Real Job, and she's been writing novels ever since.

She and her husband now live in Coventry. They have four children and a dog.

The might and power of Julius Caesar, the man who conquered the known world.

The beauty of Cleopatra, the woman who conquered the conqueror.

Together they could have forged an empire whose power had never been seen before. Tragically, it was not meant to be.

But what of the son who was born of their passion?

Gillian Bradshaw gives us a possible answer in Cleopatra's Heir, a riveting historical novel drawn from meticulous research and a unique historical premise. The young son of Julius Caesar and the fabled Cleopatra, Caesarion was seen by some as the hope of the marriage between Rome and Egypt, by others as the folly of a commander's lust for a wanton foreign schemer. For the new Roman ruler, Octavius, Caesarion is the threat that could topple his dreams of a safe and peaceful Roman Empire.

The brutal truth is that Caesarion could not be allowed to live. But what if he somehow managed to survive the inevitable assassination and went underground to hide his identity? How would he find a way to live when he has always chosen and honor, even though his life has been shadowed by forces greater than anyone should have to cope with?

Caesarion will travel the lands that he thinks he knows so well only to discover that he knew his people not at all. And only after that discovery, when he loses it all and is forced to confront his humanity, will Caesarion finally come to know friendship, honesty, and love.

And the essential truth that a man can be noble and true, bereft of land, titles . . . and even a name.

Publishers Weekly

Fascinating historical figures Julius Caesar, Marcus Antonius and Cleopatra roam the ancient Egyptian desert and the glittering city of Alexandria in this latest from classics scholar Bradshaw (The Sand-Reckoner). The hero is Cleopatra's son Caesarion, whom she has declared to be Caesar's offspring. Her ploy fails when Caesar's adopted Roman son and successor, Octavian (later Augustus), conquers Egypt and sends soldiers to attack troops fleeing with the 18-year-old Caesarion. The young man, after suffering an epileptic fit, is left for dead, but has only been wounded. Waking, he escapes, but another fit leaves him unconscious on a desert roadway, where Ani, an Egyptian merchant with a small caravan of merchandise, finds and saves him. Caesarion, who is Greek (like all royalty in Egypt at this time), is intelligent enough to conceal his background, calling himself Arion, but he cannot hide his aristocratic ways or his disdain for a mere Egyptian who treats a king as a commoner. He resents the merchant, but agrees at last to write his letters for him. Slowly, the patient and generous Ani wins Arion's respect; his beautiful daughter Melanthe falls in love with Arion, who is interested, but cannot acknowledge loving a commoner. While the story is light on action, Bradshaw's attention to Arion's growth into a caring person and the convincing historical detail she musters give the novel substance, but it is the final (and thoroughly fictional) confrontation between Octavian and Caesarion that will truly make it attractive to history buffs. (June) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.