Laurie Devine's Blog

The glory yet burden of living in Greece can be the very richness of classical beauty here, there, and everywhere.

The burden is especially heavy for those, such as myself, forever smitten with Classical Greece and compulsive

about seeing and doing whatever I think I should.

During my four years living there—plus various vacations there before and after my residence—there was always

one more temple or archaeological site that had to be visited. The only thing I didn’t like about them was

that they were always atop high hills and climbing in up the eternal heat was hard!

It took me several years in residence just to be content to settle down on Kolonaki Square in Athens

and sip iced coffee and flirt with the waiter.

Ah, but those ancient temples!

Following, in no order except prominence in my memory and heart, are some of my favorites:

Epidavros Theatre, near Naphlion, where I lived for a summer, in north Peloponnese. Ancient theatre with fantastic acoustics, every summer live performances held there. During my summer, Royal Shakespeare Theatre from England performed Shakespeare. I remember it as the most magnificent theatre I’ve ever seen.  Magic!

Temple of Delphi, mid-Greece, Mt. Parnassus. Visited on my first trip to Greece and Europe. Site of the Oracle, consulted by the ancients. I recall it as the first time I was overwhelmed by the mystique and energy of an ancient site. Will never forget it.

Acropolis in Athens. Again, saw it first during my first visit to Greece just after college. The most graceful archaeological site I’ve ever seen.  But years later, when I lived in Athens, which was a hot, congested city, with air pollution that made me gasp, I’d be trudging up one of the many hills with heavy packages, and I’d turn around, and gasp again – for there was the Acropolis.  And yes, my heart would sing.  It was those stolen glances that made me love the Acropolis. So beautiful!

Aphrodite Temple in Paphos, Cyprus. One of my books is set in Cyprus, and I spend quality time in this Temple of Love. I found it quiet and entrancing, more serene lifelong love than crazy passion.

Asclepieion on the island of Kos, near Turkish center of medicine and healing. I remember being intent on visiting this site, as I was on my way on a ferryboat to the coast of Turkey.   A guide lectured on Greek medicine.  I was fascinated. In my later years, when I became a board-certified chaplain after two years of medical residency, I dated my interest in medicine from my explorations of this site.

Rhodos, Island of Rhodes.  The old center for the Knights Templars.  Here I could satisfy my unquenchable desire to visit museums, trek through sites, and buy interesting metalwork that still hangs on my walls. Historically, the sites here tend to be Crusader oriented, rather than older Classical Greek.

Sparta, mid-Peloponnese. Site of the rival city-state of Athens. As I recall, this was one of the most organized and accessible sites. But militarism does not appeal to me, and neither did this important but to me soulless site.

Other sites may have dazzled me at the time, but over the years their particulars have become a jumble of white columns, and remembered difficulties in finding or enjoying. Troy was wonderful and moving but was on the coast of Turkey now, not Greece.  I also remember a long and difficult trip with a friend to Macedonia in Northern Greece to see an important tomb, maybe Alexander’s father—lots of gold artifacts.  But mostly I remember how hard it was to get there.  Crete I visited from London years before I moved to Greece; it was a long boat ride and I didn’t go back when I lived there, although I wanted to.  Also, several islands—Santorini and Mykonos especially—stick in my mind for their physical beauty rather than classical sites.

I recall also that near the end of my Greek sojourn, someone academic from the States was visiting, and when she asked about my archaeological visits, I airily said had seen them all.

“Really?” she said.  “All of them?  In what, four years?”

I recanted, as for a moment I swam in the old feeling that all of Greece was an archaeological site.  “No,” I said.  “But I loved the ones I did see.”

And I still do.

                                                                                                                ------Laurie Devine, Author  

Kronos is now available on Amazon KDP

I’m in the process of digitally republishing five novels I wrote nearly fifty years ago.

It’s a legacy project. A “bucket wish” for authors.

I want my out-of-print family sagas—some of which were never published in the U.S.—to finally be

available in my own country, and hopefully long after I write no more.

But it had been decades since I read my own books, written in 1979-1994. Were they worth republishing?

So it was that last year I began my legacy project by critically reading my own stuff. They were all long

books—in those days, long books like mine were often plus 200,000 words—whereas now publishers

want 80,000 novels.  I’ve heard that authors are now told 100,000-word or more novels should be cut in

half and sold as two books.

Hmmmm.  But I put away greedy thoughts of republishing not five long but ten short books

It took me six months of solid work to read my own five books.

And I’m happy to report that I loved them.  What a relief! Sometimes, after a satisfying day

of reading my own long-ago words and concepts and dialogue, I’d go to the bathroom mirror, look at my

wrinkles and jowls, and ask myself if I could still write like I once did—so full of passion and insight

and energy.  I would then tell myself, as we seniors often do, that what I’d lost in energy I’d more than

replaced with wisdom.  Sometimes I believed my own reassurances to myself.

Then, back to reading myself, sometimes I would remember exact words from every passage. 

I could recall sitting at my lightweight little typewriter on my tiny Cairo balcony, choosing each word in

every sentence.  Or when I was writing about a lovesick encounter in a Greek waterfront café, I could almost

taste the calamari once again.  It was all so clear, so entirely still in my heart and mind!

But there were other times when I totally forgot the intricacies of plots I myself had created. Scenes that

felt fresh and new to myself simply, I think, because I no longer could remember what had happened.  I vacillated

whether this was good or bad, and in the end just abandoned myself to my own fictional world.

But twice I got so wrapped up in my own stories that I wanted to change them; in both cases, I wanted

to “save” a dying character.

In one instance, I didn’t remember a particular plot twist, but I did sense, just as a reader would, that a child

was about to die in a painful way. Reading this nearly fifty years later, I said out loud,  “No!  Don’t do that!”

And I was thinking:  She’s going to kill him off.  No!  Don’t do it! I was actually thinking of myself, the author,

as the other, as “she.”

A slightly different but related issue developed during a scene of carnage in Lebanon, as I the

latter day reader could see that one of the main characters was about to die.  As it happened,

I really loved her.  (Yes, for me anyway, sometimes I had real emotions attached to my own characters.)

Reading this decades after I myself wrote it, I considered that maybe I could rewrite the scene and

have her spared.  With excitement, I realized how I could do that without changing much.

This was a very satisfying idea.  But when I discussed this with a friend, a retired English professor,

he was aghast.  He said he remembered there was some hullabaloo years ago about rewriting Lear.   I don’t

remember the particulars, but it may have been the ending; the changed plot would have lightened it up

and changed the import of everything.  My friend said that as the author of my book I could do whatever

I wanted to revise it, but that this would be looked upon critically with scorn and disdain.  So, with reluctance,

I let her die even in the digital version.

Thus it is, as I share my early work with all of you, that presenting these digital versions is, for me,

a salubrious time.  They are all good books, and this project is the capstone of my life. Know that as I pass

them from me to you, there is a smile on my face.  

Wrinkles and jowls but smiles, too! 

Kronos is available on Amazon KDP here

Image by Nanci Arvizu using Adobe Firefly

The Devine Sagas—five engrossing family sagas, three of them being published for the first time in the United States, are being digitally published this calendar year on Amazon Kindle.

Kronos, the first volume of the Devine Sagas, is set in Greece.  It was published on May 8—International

Women’s Day—and is available on Amazon Kindle.  This is its American debut publication, although it has been

available in London, published by Andre Deutsch, since 1991.

The Devine Sagas are written by the bestselling author Laurie Devine, an American from Pittsburgh, who

made her name as an international writer who excels at can’t-put-down family sagas featuring strong and

memorable women of the developing world.

Devine lived in the Middle East and leading European cities for nearly twenty years, establishing a

solid reputation as an author with intimate knowledge of the cultures she writes about.  Her base was London,

as she lived in Egypt, Israel, Greece, and Cyprus.  She now lives in Mexico.

Kronos is a modern-day Greek tragedy centered on a wily and beautiful Greek woman who is loved by

two brothers – one a leftist leader and the other a rightwing colonel  – whose intertwined lives are the fraught

saga of contemporary Greek culture. The rugged landscape of Greece provides the exotic background for a

story of primitive passions harkening back to ancient times. It was published May 8, 2024 on Amazon Kindle.

Nile unforgettably captures the human underpinnings of the Middle East today.  It is a sweeping

multi-generational saga of star-crossed lovers who find, lose and ultimately redeem each other,

set against the war-torn canvas of contemporary Egyptian and Israeli history.  An international

best-seller and Literary Guild selection, it will be published May 22, 2024 on Amazon Kindle

Saudi answers a confounding question: Whatever could make a contemporary young American

woman don a mask and veil and marry a man who already has a wife and child back in Saudi Arabia?

This multi-generational story of passion, enlightenment, and delusion sweeps from the fabled

Arabian peninsula back home to New England and along the way uncovers the netherworld

of the Middle East’s closed and superrich society. An international best-seller, it will be

published July 21, 2024, on Amazon Kindle.

Crescent is a mesmerizing Lebanese tale of the lives, triumphs, and sorrows of four young

women who meet in the 1950s at university in Beirut, which was then the “Paris of the Middle East.”

It goes behind contemporary headlines to share their hopes, fears, and dreams: of an upper-class

Palestinian, a Lebanese Christian, a poor Shia Muslim, and an American Jew with deep roots in

this culture. Their stories – riven by violence and transcended by enduring loves – unlock the

mysteries of one of the world’s most troubled and fascinating regions. It will be published

October 9, 2024, on Amazon Kindle.

Cypress is the gripping and powerful saga of two Cypriot families – one Greek, the other Turkish –

divided by fierce national and religious loyalties, and yet irrevocably drawn toward together by the

ties of blood. Reconciliation is elusive, but both sides move slowly but surely toward peace. It will be

published on December 4, 2024, on Amazon Kindle.

These editions include updated material, including suggested Book Club presentations.

Readers may notice that second-hand copies of earlier editions of these novels may

be available from time to time on used book sites.  Their sales have no connection with the author.

--Laurie Devine, Devine Saga Author   

Kronos is now available on Amazon KDP

In Greece, Easter is the most fabulous time of the year.

For families, it’s the must-time to eat, drink, and be merry together.

In my four years in Greece, I learned to celebrate Easter like a Greek.

Just in terms of fun, it’s key to celebrate in the embrace of a real Greek family, when the

traditional roasting of a lamb outside becomes a daylong center of the action. In the countryside and 

on the islands, it begins maybe the day before with someone digging a pit. In Athens, it happens on the 

rooftops, where a rigged-up roasting is engineered.  Easter morning the lamb roast begins over a real 

fire. The men—what always seems to be a succession of the uncles—hunker down to oversee the 

continual turning of the lamb, basting it all day with aromatic and alcoholic marinades.  

It’s always hot on this radiant Greek Sunday, and soon the sweating uncles discard their shirts. 

Music comes from somewhere and everywhere, and everyone else sings and claps hands. The 

generations hang about, celebrating their togetherness. Herds of young cousins race about, screaming 

their delight.

As in other holidays at other times with other nationalities, meantime confidences are shared, 

romances are begun or sealed, and relatives from afar are caught up with the best family gossip.

Meantime, the drinking never stops.  Ouzo, retsina, fine imported wines and, maybe under a 

tree, an informal bar serves men straight shots of whatever they fancy. The sun beats down. The dancing 

becomes staggered.  Drenching laughter rises and falls.

By the time the lamb is finally perfectly roasted, everyone digs in and eats until stuffed. 

Living in Greece for years was a peak lifetime experience for me, and the Easters provided some 

of the best moments. Also the best eating.  Greeks maintain the best meat in the world is roasted lamb, 

fresh from the spit, cooked outside.

           And they are right!  If you’re offered the choice between roasted lamb al fresco in a Greek backyard,

or primo steak in a fashionable big-city American restaurant, go with the lamb fresh from the skewer. But of course,

Easter is the most sacred day on the Christian calendar. Not everyone celebrates only with drunken feasts.

I and a friend spent my first Greek Easter on the holy Cycladic island of Tinos, where I had heard that

extraordinary weeklong Greek Orthodox church liturgies are held. We were enveloped in extraordinary

liturgical music for the entire Holy Week.  The music and the sacred ambiance were unforgettable, yet

curiously this amazing celebration is little known in the West or the tourist industry.

The music, some of it purportedly ancient, from the first Christian centuries, was a mix of choir singing

and chanting, which sounded foreign and of another and better world.  I remember standing there, this heavenly

music transporting me for hours in a celestial daze. This may not be for everyone, but it most definitely was for me.

Tinos is a small island, with many villages, and what seems like even more churches. During this week we

went from church to church, culminating I think on Holy Thursday, when a procession—with flowers and

wreaths and statuary everywhere, with everyone singing those mesmerizing chants—all wove down to the

harbor where the wreaths were thrown in the water. As I remember how that was, a sense of holy magic still,

after nearly fifty years, overwhelms me.

Greeks honor Tinos not only at Easter but also for a miraculous icon of the Virgin found there

more than two hundred years ago.  But it always had a holy reputation, going back to ancient times.

Poseidon, the god of the sea, was said to have sent what’s always called “a swarm of storks” to purge

the island of poisonous snakes.   

So it is in Greece. Magic everywhere. Ancient tales of snake-purging gods.  Families celebrating

with pagan roasts. The sun blessing all.  Ah, Greece!   

 Laurie Devine, Author

P.S. Orthodox Easter is always a week or so different than in Western Christian churches. This year, the Orthodox holiday is May 5 and the Western one is March 31. They follow different ancient calendars.

Laurie Devine is so, so happy to announce that finally Kronos, her award-winning Greek

family saga, is being published in the United States.

Kronos is now available for the first time in a digital edition on Amazon Kindle.

Kronos is written by the award-winning American author Laurie Devine and was first published in London in 1991 by Andre Deutsch.  It became an international best-seller and was a special favorite in Australia, which is home away from home to many hundreds of thousands of Greeks.

Kronos is expected to be even more popular in the United States, where an estimated three million Greek Americans now live but retain pride in the country of their ancestors.

Kronos It is a passionate powerful multi-generational family saga set not only in contemporary Greece but also among resettled Greeks in America’s New England.

Its story centers on a wily Greek beauty who is loved by two brothers – one a leftist leader and the other a rightwing colonel. The unforgettable beauty of the azure Aegean and Greece’s rugged mountains provide the exotic background for a story of primitive passions harkening back to ancient times. 

  Kronos is part of Laurie Devine’s five-volume Devine Sagas. 

Along with the other standalone novels in this series—Nile, Saudi, Crescent, Kronos and Cypress—these family sagas were written and published 1979-1994, some by Simon & Schuster in New York and all by Andre Deutsch in London. Now, in 2024, for the first time they are being published in digital editions and all will be available everywhere by December, 2024, on Amazon Kindle.

Devine lived in Greece for four years as she researched and wrote Kronos.  While she wrote these five novels, her base was in London and she lived not only in Greece but also in Egypt, Switzerland, and Ireland as well as spending significant time in Israel, Lebanon, and Cyprus.

She still has wanderlust and is now living in Mexico.

Meantime, vintage hardcover first editions of the Devine Sagas can still be found online at various sites. Some are used and all are nearly fifty years old.  They are being resold by persons not connected to the author.

Possibly the best thing that ever happened for Greek Americans was this film.

This romantic comedy, released in 2002, made Greek Americans loveable.

Perhaps one of the most loveable minorities in the USA. 

For a time, Greek mothers perhaps became more legendary even than Italian ones.

Or maybe (or maybe not) for the classic Jewish mothers. Who can trump a Jewish mother in full cry?  But the Greeks in this film came close.

However you rank bossy mothers, “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” made the excessive demands of the Mediterranean matriarchal family once again hysterically funny.  American audiences who didn’t know much about Greek family structures had their own never-forgotten family dynamics which were triggered by the film. But this time it was so, so funny!

The storyline had a young Greek American woman who lived in Chicago and worked in her family restaurant fall in love with a non-Greek-American man.  Laugh-out-loud situations ensued. Eventually, of course, all was well, and they married in a colorful Greek Orthodox ceremony, whose highlight was the bride and groom being carried aloft on chairs while everyone cried and cheered.

It was a crazy popular film, with two sequel films and a television serial. It is still available to stream on television.  The original film, which cost $5 million, made $368.7 million.

Of course, it’s easy to love and to watch for a repeat time or two. 

But who could ever have predicted that an unexpected result was a new embrace and recognition of Greek Americans?  For decades, most Americans would have a generally favorable opinion of Greek food and going out some time for an ethnic meal in a Greek restaurant.

Yet suddenly this film made all things Greek in America not just special fun but something that was, in the slang of that time, “way cool,” and that everyone must experience. Was it true that in Greek restaurants people exuberantly broke dinner plates as they dance around with arms linked?

Break plates! Dance around!

Buy Kronos, my Greek family saga, on Amazon Kindle!

Ompah!

    Laurie Devine, Author

Search not just in Athens but in Boston, Chicago, or—especially—in Tarpon Springs, Florida.

Greeks, along with an overflowing handful of other ethnicities and nationalities—including Jews, Irish, Armenians and so many others—are scattered all over the world. 

Mostly, just as with Greece, that’s due to a poisonous stew of reasons—usually poverty and lack of jobs combined with political instability and deadly repressions.

So it is that Kronos, my modern Greek family saga being published for the first time in the United States this spring, is situated among the Greek expatriate community in Boston as well as back in the Greek mainland and islands.

How that happens reflects some of the greatest crises of modern Greek history.  Greece languished economically as well as politically under Nazi Occupation during World War II. That struggle morphed into a bitter three-year civil war between the Greek left and right, resulting afterwards in a purge of leftists and Communists. In the subsequent chaos and devastation, one of the main characters in Kronos—Christos—was among the thousands who fled for his life. He joins his father who already had a small fish restaurant in Boston.

Greeks work hard and have a special gift for terrific restaurants, not just on the mainland and islands but wherever they settle. In my book over the following years in New England, Christos and his father prosper in what became their landmark Boston waterfront restaurant.  The novel chronicles their resilience, as Christos, like many Greeks in America and elsewhere, branches out into politics. Kronos chronicles how Greeks resettled into America, thrive and become a major success story in the melting pot that has been the USA.

Yet the novel also tells a darker side of the immigrant story in America, not just for Greeks but for the other “huddled masses”—the Irish, the Slavs, the Germans, all the others—who came for a fresh start. In their Greek restaurants during his first years in America, Christos and the others battle homesickness, loneliness, and a sense of dislocation that never quite goes away.  Christos, like many others, left a much-loved girl behind in Greece. The story of Greeks in America is about this ever-present sense of sadness as well as opportunity. 

That story was played out millions of times in postwar America as well as on the pages of Kronos.  Greeks still cluster together in their American homes away from home. Many live in the biggest American cities of the East and Midwest:  New York (especially Astoria), Boston, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Detroit.  Florida has always been a mecca, and Tarpon Springs is the hub. California, in recent decades, has also attracted its resettled Greeks.

In every locale, Greeks have a Greek Orthodox church nearby, and often there are community sales with the church ladies cooking the best of homemade Greek food.  Of course, there are Greek restaurants.  Souvlaki stands abound.  Good feta cheese is on sale in every worthy delicatessen. It’s easy to find Kalamata olives in grocery stores.  

In Kronos, as in real life, the Greeks of America are a heartening success story.

But in Kronos, always, with Christos as with so many of those who became refugees from the land that they loved, there is always a secret desire and wish.  Will I ever go back?  Kronos tells that story, too.

Image created by Nanci Arvizu using Night Café AI

Long ago, when I was young and prolific, these Devine Sagas were first published.

A few of them here in America, but all five of them in Europe, where I used to live.

Some of them were international bestsellers, even!

But why, you may ask, am I publishing digital editions of all of them?

A simple, demographic answer:  So eventually my books will survive me. 

As it happened, I wrote these novels nearly fifty years ago.  All are family sagas starring adventurous women set in exotic locations in the Middle East and in and around Greece, beginning in my early thirties and continuing for the next 25 or so years.  At that time, digital books were not common. People just bought hardcovers and paperbacks. And it is sad but true that, with the exception of mostly mega bestsellers, bound books went out of print as early as two years after they were published. You can maybe find stray “old” copies on used book websites. And probably a carton or so of their own hardcover books in the garages of authors, rather like presidents apparently stash old and mostly forgotten classified documents.

This is, for a certainty, a private grief for authors. I would guess that everyone writing a book has dreamed that words he or she wrote today will last forever and make each author as close to immortal as we can come.  For us, in our bookish and self-absorbed way, our books really are our children. 

Until the dawn of Kindle Amazon and other online publishers, this crazy little author dream hardly ever came true.  Even popular books, although possibly beloved by individual readers, stayed on private bookshelves until, years later, the heirs made mementos of some and donated most to Goodwill or the dump.

But fear not, authors! The birth and popularity of digital books has resurrected that dream of author immortality.

Now the digital world can forever keep our books available for generations of readers yet unborn!

Just last week here in Mexico, where I now live, I was sharing my digital publishing project with another aging American author. He nodded. “I know some other writers who would love to do that.”  He smiled.  “Me, too.”

There are other reasons to republish digitally.  One is that many writers—even those who had some success with traditional publishers—ended up unhappy because of poor marketing or prioritization.  Others would simply like to do it all over, and “do it right this time.”  

And of course, quite a number would like to publish books even yet unwritten, which are nonetheless so dear to their hearts and souls, without the hassle of interference or even rejection in the restrictive world of commercial publishers.

I have my own personal story of why I chose to republish digitally, and I will share that soon in this space.

But a form of immortality certainly had something to do with it.  

I remember one morning when I was working on Nile, my first novel.  I had just written what I thought was a beautiful scene, full of heartfelt insights.  And I remember thinking that sometime in the future—fifty or even a hundred years in the future—someone might read those words, and a wondrous web of deep communication would be spun between me and that reader. 

 I liked that thought then, and I still do.  Not my ego as an author but something finer—words and emotions and ideas that reach out and connect forever!  Now, there’s a worthy dream that can now come true through the magic of digital publishing. 

Laurie Devine, Kronos author

AI Image by Nanci Arvizu using Night Cafe

Greece may be best known to Americans now as a beloved sun-kissed vacation destination.

But the world of Kronos sparkles with ancient lore as well as must-see sites of bygone empires.

And lessons of what a long-gone but not-forgotten fascist dictatorship can do to a democracy.

Greece, one of the most shining jewels of the ancient world, still lights up the Mediterranean not just for what once happened here but for what is still happening to inspire, warn, and celebrate what’s best, and sometimes worst, in the human condition.

The plot and characters of Kronos revolve around two brothers who love the same woman, but the actual background—Greece, sumptuous Greece—is a bright star in its own sky.

Living there, and writing two books—Kronos and also Cypress, to be digitally published in the United States later this year—I never lost an almost reverent sense of being in a sacred place where astonishing things had happened and continue to happen.  Sometimes it seemed that everywhere I looked, there was another fallen column from ancient times.  And during something as mundane as traveling on a ferry boat to an Aegean island, inevitably I would lean on a rail, dreaming of the poet’s “wine-dark sea” that has inspired me, and the rest of the world.

So yes, Greece itself in many ways was a character in Kronos. Among the gifts of Kronos, readers may take away new perspectives on this beautiful but challenged part of our world.      

Classical Greece: it’s generally stated that democracy was born here. Greece most certainly was the home of some of the world’s greatest philosophers, including Plato and Socrates; brilliant playwrights including Sophocles, Euripides, and Aeschylus; and so many thinkers and healers that many consider Greece the cradle of civilization.  Kronos does not tell their stories, but when I lived and wrote here, for me there were ancient mystic reverberations to much that happens in Greece.

Archaeology:  Sometimes, in Greece, it feels like the whole country is an ancient site.  “Kronos” does a deep curtsey to all that in a seminal scene of the novel set in a sensuous cavern still known to the villagers as the Cave of the Great Goddess.

Fascism: Despite its symbolic importance as the birthplace of democracy, Greece fell to a fascist dictatorship 1967-1974 and became an international cause celebre. One of Kronos’ main characters becomes one of the fascist colonels, and the Greek resistance becomes key to the plot. Careful readers will see lessons in how a democracy can fall to authoritarianism. 

Greek Diaspora: Like in many of the contemporary Mediterranean countries, poverty has gripped Greece since World War II. Many native Greeks left home for economic reasons, creating a Greek diaspora of an estimated five million people. Three million live in the U.S., and among them fictionally are several main characters in Kronos. 

Greece now: As a member of the Economic Community, Greece keeps striving for economic stability.  And in many ways, its geography seems to be its destiny. During the past decades, Greece made headlines when it confronted millions of Arab refugees who tried to make it to Europe during the devastation of the Mideast wars, particularly in Syria.  Also, as a Mediterranean country, it battles the effects of climate change, including devastating wildfires. 

All this knowledge—and a great story, too—are the gifts of Kronos.

AI Image by Nanci Arvizu using Night Cafe