Monday, April 21, 2014

America's Best Kept Secret

My latest novel is an archeological mystery/suspense about finding buried treasure. The story weaves science, religion, and Native American folklore together to catapult the protagonists into mayhem and toward a find promising to change the face of Christianity.

My inspiration came after attending lectures of three well-researched men:  Rod Meldrum, Wayne May, and Bruce Porter. They introduced me to the subjects of the Michigan Relics and the mound-building civilizations of North America. Imagine my surprise when I learned of hundreds of thousands of Native American mounds along with their artifacts and skeletal remains scattered throughout the United States long before the European nations invaded this country. These were the vestiges of cities larger than Rome or London, yet barely earning a footnote in the annals of America.

My elementary and high school teachers were either ignorant or knowingly mute about such subjects, thanks to the political agendas of religious and scientific institutions and the attitude of the Manifest Destiny. America’s educated have buried the evidence or destroyed the earthworks until nothing of substance is left to understand who built them or what happened to these civilizations.

The tablets and artifacts that do exist tout philosophies of Old World cultures and suggest these people arrived in this land from across the Atlantic Ocean. Many of the relics display ancient Semitic and Egyptian writing. The colonizers used copper and iron processes to craft tablets, head plates, breastplates, and swords.
Academia has deemed most of the relics fake and the mound constructions too sophisticated for the "primitive savages" who once existed across this land. It’s America’s best kept secret, and Meldrum, May, and Porter site a powerful case in their research. Hopefully, I have succeeded to relay their message adequately in my work of fiction, and those agents who review the manuscript will find it a topic worthy of consideration. I am passionate about the subject. With a little luck, my readership will find it as fascinating as I have.