We were young. You were dying. And I was desperate. So, I rearranged the world.
When Michael Samaan and Kat Musgrave meet by the display case of a fourteenth century glass goblet at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, they know immediately that they are deeply connected—to each other and to the goblet. But neither one understands what that connection means. Through a series of uncovered books and recovered memories, Michael, a British art historian, and Kat, an American geneticist, work together to peel back the layers of history—and their past lives—to find answers. Ultimately, they discover that the goblet’s mysterious maker, known in the past as the Alchemist of Aleppo, infused the glass with the essence of his and his dying wife’s souls and with the magical promise of love renewed at some future date. But the two scholars aren’t the only ones enthralled by the museum piece and the goblet isn’t the only magical object created in the alchemist’s furnace.
Spanning centuries, THE ALCHEMIST OF ALEPPO bends the space-time continuum of souls forever bound together and embodies our fascination with what science can’t explain and money can’t buy.
We were young. You were dying. And I was desperate. So, I rearranged the world.
When Michael Samaan and Kat Musgrave meet by the display case of a fourteenth century glass goblet at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, they know immediately that they are deeply connected—to each other and to the goblet. But neither one understands what that connection means. Through a series of uncovered books and recovered memories, Michael, a British art historian, and Kat, an American geneticist, work together to peel back the layers of history—and their past lives—to find answers. Ultimately, they discover that the goblet’s mysterious maker, known in the past as the Alchemist of Aleppo, infused the glass with the essence of his and his dying wife’s souls and with the magical promise of love renewed at some future date. But the two scholars aren’t the only ones enthralled by the museum piece and the goblet isn’t the only magical object created in the alchemist’s furnace.
Spanning centuries, THE ALCHEMIST OF ALEPPO bends the space-time continuum of souls forever bound together and embodies our fascination with what science can’t explain and money can’t buy.
Michael Samaan’s phone buzzed and skittered on his desk, jolting him from his research. He tapped the screen and groaned.
Hellooooo. Hope you’re not too far down your rabbit hole to remember Lunch with Leila.
Damn. He checked the time. Yeah, late again. And he’d hear about it from his obscenely cheery and perpetually punctual little sister who plagued and entertained him in equal measure.
He marked his page and closed the book, Chemical Analysis of Ancient Glass, one of a dozen similar titles spread out on his battered dining room table. He stood and flexed his shoulders, aching from too much time hunched over his laptop or bent over a book. Sal looked up expectantly, momentarily distracted from pulling the stuffing from a plush reindeer’s nose. Michael bent to scratch the dog behind the ears. “Sorry, buddy. You stay here and guard the place.”
Undaunted, the dog clamped the reindeer in his jaws and his short legs churned a path toward the front door, tail wagging as Michael grabbed his wallet, keys, and jacket. “Stay. Be a good boy,” he said with a pointed finger, and then was out the door and headed for the Underground.
Michael had no idea where his sister got her preternaturally positive personality. She was disgustingly upbeat while his own thoughts too often spiraled into dark, desolate chambers, rivaling the most gruesome images from Bosch, van Eyck, or Fra Giovanni. Studying art history as an undergrad, he’d become obsessed with paintings of hell from the Renaissance masters, recognizing a darkness in himself that resonated with the landscapes of torture and torment celebrated artists depicted with brushes and paints. Of course, he’d tried to mask his moods with dark humor and glib witticisms, but somewhere along the way his little sister had learned to read him like a book. She could tell when Michael needed a life buoy to keep him afloat and had decided she would be that buoy. They’d never talked about it, but he’d come to rely on her—and their lunches—and was thankful she thought he was worth the effort.
He emerged back up into the sunlight and wound his way toward Mt. Olympus restaurant, their regular meeting place on a busy street teeming with tourists, and London cabs, and double-decker busses and people hurrying to and fro speaking in every possible accent and dozens of foreign languages. Having grown up in a small town, he now felt like he needed the energy of London injected straight into his veins, to crowd out the darkness that all too often stalked him like a pickpocket, ready to grab at him at a moment’s notice.
As usual, Leila was already there, sipping a glass of water chock full of lemon wedges and perusing the menu. “Want the kebab again?” She asked without looking up. “I already ordered the mezza platter.”
He pulled the menu down to see her face. “And hello to you too, sis.”
She flashed him a bright smile. “Punctual as always.”
“I’m barely ten minutes late.”
“Mum says hi, by the way. Says it’s been weeks since you went to see her.”
“Oh, please. Sal and I were there last Sunday.”
“She’s lonely. Next month’s their anniversary and it’s been five years. We should take her out to dinner.”
Five years. Christ, it seemed like five decades since the accident. On every anniversary, their dad had relished telling the story of the day he’d first laid eyes on the green-eyed, dark-haired Welsh beauty sipping tea and drawing intently in a well-worn sketchbook while sitting alone at a coffee shop near campus. A newly arrived doctoral student from Syria bearing an outrageously thick crown of wavy black hair, a nearly unintelligible accent, and a pocket protector, he’d been mesmerized by the young woman. As he’d stared at her over the rim of his coffee cup, he told his friend, I’m going to marry that one. When she’d looked up and smiled, he’d stood and wound his way through the tables toward her as if she were his true north. They’d married six months later and had been inseparable for twenty-nine years. Until the accident when he’d been killed in a hit and run on the M23. They’d borrowed Michael’s vintage convertible for an anniversary weekend in Brighton and hadn’t even gotten past Gatwick when the car was rammed from behind, pushing it off the road where it flipped and came to rest on the driver’s side. Most likely a drunk driver, but they’d never know for sure because the driver responsible fled the scene and was never found. CCTV caught it all, but the driver was wearing a hat and glasses, and the car’s plates turned out to be stolen.
The accident had knocked Michael completely off-kilter. It had been his first year at City University London teaching a full class load, and he’d had to handle the sale of his father’s company to the board of directors, arrange and manage his mother’s care while she recuperated from her injuries, and support Leila in her first year at Cambridge, all while slogging through his own personal darkness.
He’d never said a word to anyone. Never revealed the full extent of the desolation—and the nagging feeling that he was to blame for the accident—he so often inhabited. It was his cross to bear, he told himself. Punishment for sins he didn’t understand but felt bone-deep he’d committed. Punishment meted out to his father instead of to him, which only added to the weight on his shoulders. He deserved the darkness that ebbed and flowed in his blood. And recently it had returned in spades, calling out to him. Beckoning as if the answers he sought to questions he’d never known to ask were waiting for him. If only he’d let go.
“You pick the place,” he said. “I’ll pick up the tab. And bring that fiancé of yours too. Isn’t he due back this week?”
The server set the mezza platter in the middle of the table. Leila ordered with brusque authority and gave the server a devastating smile. The man walked away with a slightly stunned shake of the head. They were regulars. He should be used to Leila by now.
Michael rolled his eyes. With a diamond stud in her nose, dangling earrings that drew attention to her elegant neck, green eyes set against a flourish of pitch-black lashes, and long, pink-streaked black hair swept up in a tangled nest on the crown of her head, Leila Samaan had the kind of presence that always made heads turn. And she knew it.
“Today, in fact,” she said. “I’m heading out to Heathrow after lunch and”—her face took on a dreamy glow—“well, I anticipate an extremely satisfying evening ahead.”
Michael groaned. “Must you?”
“Actually, I must.” She sighed dreamily. “It’s what a fiancé is for, after all. Speaking of, when are you going to get one of your own?” Michael shut his eyes against the inevitable onslaught. “You know I worry about you,” Leila went on. “When was the last time you went on a date? Or even, you know…had sex?”
He rubbed his temples as if in pain. “Christ, Leila, I’m not talking to you about my sex life.”
“That’s only because you don’t have one.” She waved a piece of pita bread at him. “I don’t like the idea of you being lonely.”
“I know,” he relented on a sigh. “I’m fine. Really.”
“No. You’re not. Let’s be blunt. Many of my friends think you’re magazine-cover material and would give a limb to shag you. Yet every time George and I try to set you up, you take on some new project and go dark like a Medieval cave hermit. Like with this book. I know you’ve found your footing and that this project is special, but still, you need to get out. And by out, I don’t mean hanging around the V&A for hours on end. What is it with you and that museum, anyway?”
“Um, let’s see, it’s got one of the most extensive ancient glass collections in the UK, and I’m writing a book on Syrian glassmaking?”
“Please. You’ve been hanging out there since you were practically in short pants.”
“I never wore short pants.”
“Maybe you should. Show a little leg, brother. Have some fun. What do you do at the V&A all day anyway? I mean, it’s a cool place, but for god’s sake, you’re thirty-two! Don’t you have better things to do with your free time?”
“The collection is…wait. Why do I need to explain to you why an art historian would like to hang out in a museum?” The truth was he didn’t understand his obsession with the V&A himself. Well, he wasn’t obsessed with the museum, but rather with a single glass goblet that had called out to him from the very first moment he’d seen it. Over the years, he’d spent hundreds of hours just staring at it. Feeling it resonate in his soul like a struck gong. Everyone at the museum knew him, and most likely thought him a bit daft. He thought so too. In fact, he was headed over there after lunch. That’s why he’d picked the Mt. Olympus restaurant for their monthly lunches. It was only a couple of Underground stops from home and a nice walk to the V&A. Easy access to his obsession.
She gave him her notorious side eye. “You don’t fool me. And you don’t fool Mum. She’s been busy, by the way. Reading runes. Throwing stones. Tarot. She says something is coming to disrupt your life. A big change. Romance, intrigue, the whole bit. She’s quite beside herself with anticipation.”
“I hope you and George give her grandchildren soon so she can leave off obsessing about my love life.”
“Or lack thereof.”
“Whatever.”
Leila stuffed an olive in her mouth. “She says your aura was pulsating with energy last time she saw you. According to her, it means you’re on the edge of a life-changing event.”
“My life-changing event might well be matricide.”
“Shall I alert Scotland Yard?”
“Or maybe sororicide.” He drained half his glass of water.
“You adore me too much to harm a hair on my head, big brother.”
Michael turned in search of the server. “Where’s our food?”
“Don’t change the subject. You need a date for next Friday.”
He raised an eyebrow. “What for?”
She reached out and slapped his arm. “What for? For my thesis show, that’s what.”
“You’re having a show?”
“Wanker.”
“I’m sorry. Of course, I know it’s your big night.”
“And it’s the twentieth anniversary of my program so the department’s going all out. She speared a cucumber and considered it. “It’ll be quite the sophisticated affair.”
“I’ll bring Mum as my date.”
Leila shook her head. “Can’t. Mum’s bringing her book club.”
“No worries.” He shrugged. “Just for you, I’ll arrange to meet a gorgeous woman and fall deeply in love between now and next Friday.” He pulled out his phone and pretended to enter reminders on his calendar. “Let’s see. It’s still early, so I can get started today. First on the agenda, meet beautiful woman. Tomorrow: Fall in love. Next: Bring home said beautiful woman and have mad sex. Get engaged. And next Friday? Take her to sister’s show.” He looked up. “Satisfied?”
“Brilliant. Can’t wait to meet her.”
Thanks to Reedsy/Discovery for an ARC of this book. I was totally unfamiliar with this author. In fact, Reedsy reached out to me for a review and, after reading a sample, I was hooked. What an incredible ride. It’s the kind of epic love story that takes place over the course of 600 years, with the main character, Micah (sometimes Michael, sometimes Elias, and sometimes other names) continually comes back and searches for his wife Yasmine (Emmaline, Kat, and others).
When we meet Michael Samaan and Kat Musgrave, separately, we’re not quite sure what to expect, but since it’s a romance, we know they’re fated to be together. But Kat lives in Arizona and Michael is in England. When they meet, it’s like lightning striking, where they both realize that after lives spent with vivid, inexplicable dreams and a sense of loss, they were meant to find one another. Meanwhile, Sergei, also in England, is somehow connected to Michael—but he remembers everything. And he’s desperate for Michael to remember.
The story jumps back and forth in time—to the original Micah and Yasmine, to Elias and Emmaline, to Michael and Kat—1350 to 1640 to present-day. And let’s just say that the first two couples did not find their happy endings. Nor, presumably, did the others. Actually, when the author directs the reader back in time, I found myself becoming very nervous because I sensed something bad was about to happen. I wasn’t wrong. It made it so that I worried about what might happen in the here and now, with Michael and Kat.
We don’t know a lot about the original sin in this book. It’s shrouded in mystery for most of the story, but there are glimpses of the past and what happened. Micah, the original alchemist, created a piece of glasswork to bind himself and his wife for all eternity. However, he had mixed feelings about it because he felt he had overstepped what any human should do: “He dipped the nib into the ink again and studied the goblet sitting on the table before him. He would gladly destroy it a thousand times over if he could. But that was impossible. The unholy thing must be protected or the pain would be for naught and the promise he’d made to his wife—and to the others—would be a lie.”
Later, he thinks, “He’d lived too hard. Learned too late. Paid too high a price for daring to alter the natural order. Now, he wondered how long he would pay. Lifetimes, he suspected. And so would the others. Lifetimes. With no way out.”
One of the lines from the book, repeated over time, that I loved was: “Remember that time is ephemeral, always slipping through our fingers. Love, however, lasts forever.”
In present day, Michael’s sister Leila is engaged to George, the eldest son of a member of the English aristocracy. After an odd encounter with Sergei, George’s father says, “I mean that was one of the more bizarre evenings I’ve ever spent, and I’ve dropped acid with Keith Richards.” This made me chuckle out loud.
When Sergei finally meets his soulmate, as he certainly must, his observations are so romantic and poetic that I have to share them. “Her hair, Sergei realized, was the color of maple syrup. Did he think that because she was Canadian or because he wanted to know if it would pour through his fingers with slow, sugary sweetness?” And then, he thinks, “Her voice was like the smoothest whiskey, like peat and moss and air and sky and rain and life and he nearly swooned and then laughed inwardly at himself even as he wondered if he’d survive the moment with all his faculties intact.”
I absolutely loved this book and highly recommend it. It is utterly believable and peppered with details that bring the story to life, creating vivid images and strong emotions. It’s memorable. It’s unusual. And it’s so well-written and engaging (aside from my occasional feelings of tension that I experienced), it was hard to put it down. It’s obviously a labor of love, proven by the afterward in which the author explains how the story came to be. Wow. And while there’s a part of me that wishes it could be true—the soulmate part—the other part of me acknowledges that such a story, if true, would be a living nightmare. I’ll definitely read more from this author.