“Caught Between Worlds is a fantastic story set in Iraq in 1980 about a kidnapping—except instead of a kid, it’s his father who is taken hostage when war breaks out with Iran. Tom O’Hara’s father is taken by armed militants shortly after they move to Baghdad. Grieving the loss of his mother a year ago, Tom relies on his memories of her, an anthropology professor, and their mutual interest in Alexander the Great who appears to Tom as a guide. With the help of his new friend Mikhail and a dog named Ursa, Tom rescues his father and learns the power of friendship which transcends religious or cultural differences. A page-turner with a terrific plot twist.” – Jill Swenson Therese has been a voracious reader since early childhood. Heaven, as she saw it, was discovering the Carnegie Library in walking distance of her Springfield, Illinois, home. Her father’s sisters and her mother were readers and tale-tellers. Her two grandfathers were instrumental in forming her core value that everyone can hold their own beliefs and still get along, a central theme of her writing. Therese’s connection to the Arab culture came from her Iraqi husband, whom she met in college, and his family. As soon as they met, she started reading everything she could on Iraq. When she opened a conversation with him based on her reading, he often said: “Really? How do you know that?” He spent his youth dreaming of America. She dove into Iraqi culture and cooking as if…
“Caught Between Worlds is a fantastic story set in Iraq in 1980 about a kidnapping—except instead of a kid, it’s his father who is taken hostage when war breaks out with Iran. Tom O’Hara’s father is taken by armed militants shortly after they move to Baghdad. Grieving the loss of his mother a year ago, Tom relies on his memories of her, an anthropology professor,… [Read More]
Filed Under: Alexander the Great, Arab culture, Baghdad, Caught Between Worlds, Caught Between Worlds: Tom Mikhail and Alexander the Great, Therese Tappouni
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Denouement – noun The final outcome of the main dramatic complication in a literary work (Merriam-Webster) The outcome of a complex sequence of events (Merriam-Webster) The end of a story, in which everything is explained, or the end result of a situation (Cambridge) “The denouement is the final outcome of the story, generally occurring after the climax of the plot. Often it’s where all the… [Read More]
One month ago, Chelsea Hanson launched her new book The Sudden Loss Survival Guide: Seven Essential Practices for Healing Grief. Even though the global pandemic made it more challenging to celebrate and promote the book without face-to-face author events, the book is doing exceptionally well. There is a reason for that. It resonates with readers and with the circumstances we find ourselves in these days…. [Read More]
In a recent article published by The Good Men Project, David Madden decodes the military jargon “battle space” as the killing fields and suggests the military rhetoric provides a pretext for delaying or cancelling the November election. “It is not enough that the Trump government bungled the pandemic and directly caused the deaths of over a hundred thousand Americans. It is not enough that the… [Read More]
Announcing The MIT Press will publish Out of the Cave: A Natural Philosophy of Mind and Knowing by Mark Johnson and Don M. Tucker in fall 2021. From a philosopher and a neuropsychologist comes an interdisciplinary theory of knowing as embodied, embedded, enacted, and emotionally-based. Plato’s allegory of the cave trapped us in the illusion that the mind is separate from the body, from the… [Read More]