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Davide
David Bruno, an atheist philosopher and Harvard professor who offended modern Muslims by publishing a book comparing their religious fervor to that of medieval Christians, gets a mind blowing shock from a bolt of lightning on Mount Subasio when he comes to Italy, hoping to escape the media spotlight. A strange woman rescues him, heals a deep burn on his chest overnight, heightens his sense of smell and gives him the Francis-power of communing with nature. Nola is a wild supernatural being who lies about being a teacher and calls him a badass philosopher. She's fallen out of favor for being too human, lost her wings and seeks to change him to redeem herself in the eyes of the forces above. Besieged by the paparazzi, aware that he's under the spell of a mischievous angel, David struggles to deal with a new and unusual way of life.
300 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 2014
240 people want to read
About the author
Roger Thomas Pepper
4 books13 followersRoger Pepper is the author of three novels, The Brothers Cro-Magnon, When Ice Ran Red and Davide, which are listed on Goodreads, and can be viewed on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDkXV...
Now a mainstream author, he withdrew from a successful career in science to follow his lifelong ambition of becoming a novelist. An Associate of the British Institution of Metallurgists, Roger went to postgraduate school at Manchester University in the United Kingdom, where he was awarded his Ph.D.
Roger is the coauthor of a patent on the development of the metal composite material used for the antenna of the Hubble Space Telescope. He began writing in his spare time while serving as the Director of Research of an Aerospace Materials Company in the United States.
His memoir, My Father The Viking, won 3rd Prize in the 2006 Linda Joy Myers Memoir Competition of the National League of American Pen Women, a competition open to published and unpublished works. He received an Honorable Mention for an earlier version of the first 50 pages of the The Brothers Cro-Magnon from a contest run by the Speculative Literature Foundation.
Roger is a member of the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance and the New Hampshire Writers Project. He is a co-organizer of the Portland Writers Group (350 members), and the host of their monthly evening writing workshops. Tess Gerritsen acknowledged him in her bestselling medical thriller, Harvest, for providing research materials.
With friends from the Appalachian Mountain Club, Roger hiked in the Austrian and Italian Alps, traveled in France and Israel, and trekked in the Kangchenjunga and Annapurna Himalayan regions of Nepal, the Tien Shan [mountains/Mountains] of the Central Asian republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Russia.
He now writes full time and lives in Maine.
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During a flight from Moscow to Kazakhstan, it struck me how beautiful the Tien Shan Mountains looked all decked in white and how ugly they could become with global warming. But what about when the permafrost melts in Siberia, now there really had to be a story there. Gradually, Corky Mason, the heroine of The Brothers Cro-Magnon, came into being and told me the story of how she fell in love with a baby mammoth and came within a polar bear’s whisker of being a cavewoman. Sitting high up in Italy’s World War One trenches, while backpacking in the Alps, I tried to wrap my mind around living in an icy trench for a whole year, wearing a thin woolen uniform, exposed to the elements, starving and fighting for my life. Carmela DeMitri materialized from the thin air then stayed with me for three years, sharing her story of When Ice Ran Red. I sat at an outlook on Mt. Subasio in Italy, gazing down at the white walls of Assisi, and my thinking turned to a book of philosophy I’d been reading that damned faith and belief. What if that philosopher sat here and an avenging angel struck him with a bolt of lightning? Wild thinking indeed, yet it wouldn’t leave me until David Bruno appeared and told me the story of Davide.
Now a mainstream author, he withdrew from a successful career in science to follow his lifelong ambition of becoming a novelist. An Associate of the British Institution of Metallurgists, Roger went to postgraduate school at Manchester University in the United Kingdom, where he was awarded his Ph.D.
Roger is the coauthor of a patent on the development of the metal composite material used for the antenna of the Hubble Space Telescope. He began writing in his spare time while serving as the Director of Research of an Aerospace Materials Company in the United States.
His memoir, My Father The Viking, won 3rd Prize in the 2006 Linda Joy Myers Memoir Competition of the National League of American Pen Women, a competition open to published and unpublished works. He received an Honorable Mention for an earlier version of the first 50 pages of the The Brothers Cro-Magnon from a contest run by the Speculative Literature Foundation.
Roger is a member of the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance and the New Hampshire Writers Project. He is a co-organizer of the Portland Writers Group (350 members), and the host of their monthly evening writing workshops. Tess Gerritsen acknowledged him in her bestselling medical thriller, Harvest, for providing research materials.
With friends from the Appalachian Mountain Club, Roger hiked in the Austrian and Italian Alps, traveled in France and Israel, and trekked in the Kangchenjunga and Annapurna Himalayan regions of Nepal, the Tien Shan [mountains/Mountains] of the Central Asian republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Russia.
He now writes full time and lives in Maine.
------------------------------------
During a flight from Moscow to Kazakhstan, it struck me how beautiful the Tien Shan Mountains looked all decked in white and how ugly they could become with global warming. But what about when the permafrost melts in Siberia, now there really had to be a story there. Gradually, Corky Mason, the heroine of The Brothers Cro-Magnon, came into being and told me the story of how she fell in love with a baby mammoth and came within a polar bear’s whisker of being a cavewoman. Sitting high up in Italy’s World War One trenches, while backpacking in the Alps, I tried to wrap my mind around living in an icy trench for a whole year, wearing a thin woolen uniform, exposed to the elements, starving and fighting for my life. Carmela DeMitri materialized from the thin air then stayed with me for three years, sharing her story of When Ice Ran Red. I sat at an outlook on Mt. Subasio in Italy, gazing down at the white walls of Assisi, and my thinking turned to a book of philosophy I’d been reading that damned faith and belief. What if that philosopher sat here and an avenging angel struck him with a bolt of lightning? Wild thinking indeed, yet it wouldn’t leave me until David Bruno appeared and told me the story of Davide.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
September 12, 2014
Where do my book ideas come from? I sat at an outlook on Mt. Subasio in Italy, gazing down at the white walls of Assisi, and my thinking turned to a book of philosophy I’d been reading that damned faith and belief. What if that philosopher sat here and an avenging angel struck him with a bolt of lightning? Wild thinking indeed, yet it wouldn’t leave me until David Bruno appeared and told me the story of Davide.
October 1, 2014
i received this book for free as part of a first reads promotion
May 2, 2015
Davide is a novel of spiritual fantasy that follows a man along his picaresque journey from troubled intellectual, to lightning struck man, to a man imbued with the graces of St. Francis, to the life he builds using those graces. It is a gentle book filled with a message of kindness and charity.
David, the ornery, wealthy Italian-American protagonist, a famous history professor at Harvard University in the States, is visiting Assisi in Italy when his transformation takes place. That is appropriate, since St. Francis set up his religious community in Assisi, and it has been a pilgrimage destination for the faithful for centuries.
"The cluster of medieval building surrounded by a wall and spilling down the slope below..."
Through the course of the book, we learn about the man David was before he was altered by the lightning strike combined with some divine intervention. Through the 3rd-person limited narration, we enter David's mind and see how he deals with the drastic changes in his perspective, goals, emotions, and values.
St. Francis was a kind, gentle man, a follower not a leader, keen on reconciliation, forgiveness, compassion, justice, and he was a lover of nature and all God's creatures. David finds himself imbued with these characteristics, and provided with an elderly woman (a guardian angel) who helps smooth his way along to his new life.
"What happened in Italy turned his world inside out. When he met Nola [his spiritual guide], things became as loony as Alice's Wonderland."
The story of Davide is the journey David makes to a new life. Most of the story takes place in Italy, in and around Assisi, which is described lovingly by the author. There is a brief part of the story that takes place in Boston and New York City in the States, when David returns to visit family and to deal with some former business.
But the central story in Davide is David's relationship with Nola, his spiritual guide. Their relationship varies throughout the book, sometimes bantering, at times chiding, sometimes loving in a mother-son way. Their dynamic provides much of the drive for the story, and it is enriched with the author's beautiful descriptions of Nola's mystical nature.
Nola encourages David to try to spread goodwill and kindness rather than anger, controversy and fear. This is the message of the book, and it is demonstrated by how David changes his live after receiving his gifts. Providing comfort and understanding turns out to be much more productive and helpful to the world than the path of criticizing and grandstanding that David had taken pre-transformation.
I think this book will appeal to those who enjoy reading about people on a spiritual journey. Those who value the messages of St. Francis will understand the value they can have in a troubled world. David's journey is well-written (only a few typos that will certainly be edited out very soon), at times lyrical, gentle entertainment for people with kind hearts and open minds.
Please visit my full and illustrated review at Italophile Book Reviews. I received a review copy of this book.
http://italophilebookreviews.blogspot...
David, the ornery, wealthy Italian-American protagonist, a famous history professor at Harvard University in the States, is visiting Assisi in Italy when his transformation takes place. That is appropriate, since St. Francis set up his religious community in Assisi, and it has been a pilgrimage destination for the faithful for centuries.
"The cluster of medieval building surrounded by a wall and spilling down the slope below..."
Through the course of the book, we learn about the man David was before he was altered by the lightning strike combined with some divine intervention. Through the 3rd-person limited narration, we enter David's mind and see how he deals with the drastic changes in his perspective, goals, emotions, and values.
St. Francis was a kind, gentle man, a follower not a leader, keen on reconciliation, forgiveness, compassion, justice, and he was a lover of nature and all God's creatures. David finds himself imbued with these characteristics, and provided with an elderly woman (a guardian angel) who helps smooth his way along to his new life.
"What happened in Italy turned his world inside out. When he met Nola [his spiritual guide], things became as loony as Alice's Wonderland."
The story of Davide is the journey David makes to a new life. Most of the story takes place in Italy, in and around Assisi, which is described lovingly by the author. There is a brief part of the story that takes place in Boston and New York City in the States, when David returns to visit family and to deal with some former business.
But the central story in Davide is David's relationship with Nola, his spiritual guide. Their relationship varies throughout the book, sometimes bantering, at times chiding, sometimes loving in a mother-son way. Their dynamic provides much of the drive for the story, and it is enriched with the author's beautiful descriptions of Nola's mystical nature.
Nola encourages David to try to spread goodwill and kindness rather than anger, controversy and fear. This is the message of the book, and it is demonstrated by how David changes his live after receiving his gifts. Providing comfort and understanding turns out to be much more productive and helpful to the world than the path of criticizing and grandstanding that David had taken pre-transformation.
I think this book will appeal to those who enjoy reading about people on a spiritual journey. Those who value the messages of St. Francis will understand the value they can have in a troubled world. David's journey is well-written (only a few typos that will certainly be edited out very soon), at times lyrical, gentle entertainment for people with kind hearts and open minds.
Please visit my full and illustrated review at Italophile Book Reviews. I received a review copy of this book.
http://italophilebookreviews.blogspot...
August 17, 2014
Story takes place in Umbria, Italy, first on the top of Mount Subasio and then in area around Assisi. Since I visit this area on a regular basis, I was drawn to "Davide". The author, Roger Pepper, accurately describes the area. Took me right back there. This is a book of goodness. Reminds me of the books by Alexander McCall Smith. While there is an Angel involved and a transformation of David to Davide.... who takes on a St. Francis persona, I did not find it a religious book. I do NOT like religious books. This book was believable....as in enjoying a fairy tale as a child. I found it entertaining. Animal lovers will especially like this book.
August 23, 2016
Better than mammoths
I really enjoyed this book. It was a great story of a man who was terribly lost on a journey to redeem himself after being struck by lightning. I enjoyed this book even more than the authors last book about mammoths in modern day Siberia. I loved all the characters in this book. I even liked Nolan the Gaurdian Angel.
I really enjoyed this book. It was a great story of a man who was terribly lost on a journey to redeem himself after being struck by lightning. I enjoyed this book even more than the authors last book about mammoths in modern day Siberia. I loved all the characters in this book. I even liked Nolan the Gaurdian Angel.
October 5, 2014
Davide is a fantasy story with a great deal of emotional appeal. It would be good reading for Christian young adults. As a novel it is short and simply written. I would appreciate a little more development of the character before his transformation.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews