In 1882, Irish immigrant Nora Flanagan escapes the squalor of Boston’s North End by traveling to Butte, Montana, to marry Tade Larkin, a miner. Nora gains love and security, but Tade’s death ends her dreams. To support her daughter she takes in a lodger, gambler Bat Moriarty. Loneliness and youth lead to their brief affair which ends in Nora’s pregnancy. Bat slips out of Butte.
Nora relocates to Helena where tragedy strikes anew. Chinese Jim Li helps her find work as a housekeeper at the brothel where he serves as handyman and bouncer. Nora’s hatred of prejudice enables her to befriend the upstairs girls and handle the profane madam. Bat arrives on the night Nora gives birth. He is shot in a saloon brawl which also results in the brothel burning. As the conflagration goes on, both Jim and Nora make decisions that will affect them, and others, for the rest of their lives.
Traveling together to the wild North Fork of the Flathead River, they remain unaware that Bat is seeing revenge against Jim. Their lives become a challenging, romantic, wilderness adventure. They meet mountain men, Blackfeet, and fiercely independent settlers. They build home and family, but all is threatened when Bat reappears.
Sepphoris, Israel, 1995: Henry and Alice Cross, Harvard scholars leading an archaeological dig, discover clay tablets recording a family’s epic history from Moses through Mary, the mother of Jesus. The Tablets raise serious questions about the foundations of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Was Moses a servant of God or a charlatan? What did Jesus want? What were Mary’s secrets? The discovery holds many answers. Henry and Alice call their find the Jesus Tablets.
News of the discovery leads to behind-the -scenes conflicts among world powers, some willing to kill either to suppress or reveal the evidence. The American President, the Israeli Prime Minister, the Pope, a Hamas commander, Jesuits, and agents with unknown allegiances all scheme to control the Tablets. Henry and Alice’s struggle to protect what they’ve unearthed takes them from Israel to Washington, D.C. as they survive shocking murders of innocent friends. Will they and the Tablets survive? How important is the truth? Will a Machiavellian solution to conflict in the Middle East actually work? You are invited to enter the complex labyrinth of Remarkable Silence.