Refiner's Fire »

Sylvia Bambola received the Silver Angel Award for Refiner's Fire, as well as the Small Press Editor's Choice Award for her first novel, A Vessel of Honor (published under the pen name Margaret Miller). A resident of New York, she is a frequent speaker at Christian women's events. Sylvia and her husband have two grown children.

A thriller steeped in European culture like The Salzburg Connection, Refiner's Fire serves up serious suspense to avid fiction readers. This book's "secret underground society" is not Nazi war criminals, however-it's the persecuted Christian church. Yuri and Alexander Deyneko, separated as teens in postwar times, are reunited thirty-five years later in 1980s Bucharest. Now on separate sides of Nicolae Ceausescu's Iron Curtain, the secret life of one brother, a top army official and clandestine Christian, and the ambition of the other- now the American Ambassador to Romania-puts them on a collision course with each other. Fates hang on an issue of conscience. Great writing propels readers through the plot toward a gripping climax.

About the Author:

Sylvia Bambola was awarded the Small Press Editor's Choice Award in 1998 for her first novel, A Vessel of Honor (published under pen name Margaret Miller). A resident of New York state, she is a frequent speaker at Christian women's events. Sylvia and her husband have two grown children.

Library Journal

Bambola bases this novel on first-hand accounts of atrocities committed under Nicolae Ceau sescu. When, in the wake of World War II, a Romanian woman had to sell one son to an American officer to escape a refugee camp, she impressed the officer's name on the memory of her remaining son. Forty years later, Alexander Wainwright accepts a posting to Romania, and a spy, Col. Yuri Deyneko, is immediately attached to the new ambassador. Yuri is the only one who knows that he is Alexander's brother, and when he sees how cold this man is, he wishes it weren't so. Under Ceau sescu's regime, Christians have been forced underground, and Alexander is ordered not to rock the boat. But when a plea to help them comes from both his wife and Yuri, he turns to God for answers. By turns hopeful and devastating, this novel powerfully portrays the unbearable cruelty of humans and the helplessness of the Christians, whose faith never falters. Writing as Margaret Miller, Bambola won the 1998 Small Press Editor's Choice Award for her first novel, A Vessel of Honor, and her new work deserves a place in all collections. Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\