Siam

What if you remembered a life before this one? But didn't understand why. Until the pieces began to fit. Leon Rose is an Oregon nurseryman, unaware of subconscious memories of sacrifice over the millennia in the service of lost empires. Quiet, unguarded moments in the present bring vivid recall of unresolved emotions from a prior life as an Englishman, reliving the trauma of trench warfare and love lost a century ago. Intense longing for an extraordinary, unattainable English beauty draws him face-to-face with her - in the Orkneys of 1912 and London of 1915. Then and there is here and right now in the emotions of Leon Rose. Sharp memories of British trench assaults in France and Belgium are renewed, including a vow shouted under fire in 1917 to find the profligate one, the individual whom millions held accountable for the horrendous slaughter on the Somme and at Passchendaele in World War I. The vow resurfaces now, almost a century later. Now a prominent planning commissioner in contemporary Elder, Oregon, Leon is part of the expansive ambitions of Jim House, his adopted town's mayor. But proximity to Jim House triggers Leon's still-acute bitterness from the trenches, from 1917, and sparks an all-or-nothing commitment to a mayoral election he cannot win. Both men are mysteriously given glimpses of their own soul's history. Neither can forgive nor forget injustice. Only one will find his way.