Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. "We need indisputable proof," Rosinante says firmly. "Absolute, unassailable. This," she taps the printout, "is just a piece of paper. Its not enough." "But what about Henry Cadence?" asks a tall woman, a Russian astrophysicist. "His abilities are really quite remarkable." Rimbaud turns to the woman. "Anna...I'm afraid the world is simply moving much too fast for common miracles anymore. If Jesus Christ walked across the Hudson River today, or cured AIDS, or appeared in the sky over the L.A. Freeway, the world would say, 'Great job, JC-who's your agent?' No, Anna, I'm afraid we need more than miracles. What we need is...them." He glances up at the ceiling. The meaning is crystalline. "The Delphins?" Anna says. Rimbaud silently nods. Martin, the Jesuit, suddenly blurts, "This is the end of the church if this gets out, Francois. You know this." His hands are lightly shaking. "Its the end of the Flat Earth Society." Anna gently pats his shoulder. "Do they have to know?" someone asks. "Its our duty." argues another. Rimbaud picks up the printouts from the long table, glances around the room at his colleagues "In time..." he suggests, "all will be revealed." Product Description The Twelfth Strand is the story of an oddly incongruous love affair between two remarkable people, Henry Cadence and Eva Chakluak. It is also a kind of owner's manual for life on earth, offering an explanation for one of the most baffling mysteries of humankind. Exactly how, and perhaps more importantly, when did Homo Sapiens make their startlingly rapid, almost overnight, cultural leap from primitive, cave-dwelling, hunter-gatherers to intellectually advanced creators of complex architecture, art, science, and language?The answer lies in another question, a disarmingly simple question of The Twelfth Strand, 'What do you love?'Henry Cadence was an astronaut in the late summer of 1969 who experienced a profoundly life-altering close encounter while onboard the moon-orbiting Apollo 11. He fell back to earth forever changed and possessing an uncanny relationship with the living spirits of machinery. Eva Chakluak, a recently-widowed Inuit woman now living in Homestead, Florida, having inherited a threadbare traveling circus from an abusive Russian husband, has need of a good mechanic. She hires Henry Cadence, a cheerfully accentric drifter, to keep her singular little world in good running repair. Its a love made in heaven.With only one slight problem. Henry, it seems, has this peculiar, and unpredictable tendency of slipping back into the deep river of distant time. Lately he's been to ancient Egypt, 1,300 years before the birth of Christ to be exact. The boy-king, Tutankhamen, has recently died, victim of some unknown disease, maybe choked on a peach pit, or perhaps even murdered by political rivals.The grieving Egyptians look to their Solar God for guidance, a god who appears unexpectedly from the desert, a god who seems to know things about the future, a god named Henry . . . About the Author Phil Austin, born in Hartford, CT in 1953 has lived on Nantucket, Island for the past twenty years with his wife Ursula, son Robin, and an alarming number of tame animals. He has been a blues singer, a Native American rights activist, a theatre designer, and housewright. His magical realism tales of angels, aliens, and the everyday saints among us all speak of the invariable goodness of humankind. His first novel, On Bethel Ridge, a Christmas fable published in 1998, was hailed as 'a sharply etched tale reaching across cultures with a universal spirituality.'