For reasons that I should not reveal, the boys have been separated and have grown to become men committed to different and opposing cultures. The second half of Empires of Sand begins in the Sahara in 1876. For some time, over a hundred pages at least, I was unsure of exactly who the main characters in this book would turn out to be. It begins with the love story of Serena and Henri, Moussa’s parents and goes on to tell the tragic story of Paul’s father and mother and their unhappy marriage. The first half of the book takes place in France in 1866 when the boys are children and continues through the 1870 siege of Paris. The Tuareg are a nomadic Saharan desert tribe. Empires of Sand is, at its heart, the story of Moussa DeVries, the only son of a French count and his cousin, Paul. These books formed the foundation for my own love of history, so when I received the beautifully bound hard copy of Empires of Sand, complete with maps, I was jumping for joy. Lots of these books had compelling love stories though no one would have dared called them “romances” to the conservative guys who read them. In those days it seemed that almost everybody’s dad was a WWII vet with an interest in history. I grew up in the 1960s when big panoramic historical novels by people like Thomas Costain, Kenneth Roberts, and Hervy Allen were popular.
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