Fleeing an abusive father and a hopeless life in Ireland in 1895, nineteen-year-old Tom Callahan takes passage for America. On board the Antioch he meets Katrina Hansen, a beautiful young Norwegian woman headed with her family for Utah. It's not a likely match. Tom is a brash Irish Catholic. Katrina is a refined, cultured woman recently coverted to Mormonism. Destiny is a sprawling historical novel set at the end of the nineteenth century during one of the most turbulent times in the history of American and the world. Filled with memorable historical and fictional characters, and packed with action, adventure, romance, religious conflict and political intrigue, it is played out in such far-flung places as New York City, the gold fields of Alaska, a beleagured Mormon colony in Old Mexico and a vibrant Salt Lake City. Gordon Ryan has spun an exciting family saga that will satisfy your itch for a rollicking good read even while it leaves you wanting to read Book II.
Gordon Ryan was a writer with a varied history. He lived and worked in six foreign nations and a dozen or more states, including Alaska. He served in the 1st Recon Battalion, U.S. Marine Corps in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and in the Air Force in Thailand during the Vietnam War. He also served as a member of the American Embassy staff in Dublin, Ireland, during the violent seventies. His first published novel, Dangerous Legacy, was released in 1994 and he published ten more over the intervening years with the three Pug Connor novels, the last one released in early 2011.