The Horses at the Gate
In the year 4368 B.C.E., Marrah, daughter of the peaceloving shore people, has fled captivity from the nomad warrior horde who have a lust for carnage and conquest that is alien to her. Across a landscape of frozen steppes and trackless forests, she and her companions must evade the horsemen before they reach her beloved homeland by the sweetwater sea. Making escape even more dangerous is the presence of her lover, Stavan, who has abandoned his place of honor among the nomads to join her in her flight and ally himself with the Mother Goddess. "deserves a place on the shelves next to the works of Jean Auel" -Booklist Booklist: The sequel to Mackey's Year the Horses Came transports us to northeastern Rumania and western Ukraine some six to eight thousand years ago. Drenched in blood sacrifice and hatred, the villain Changar vows revenge against Marrah and her gentle lover Stavan, a prehistoric New Age man and rightful heir to the Hansi throne, which has been usurped by the dead chief Zuhan's evil bastard son Vlahan, a devotee of rape and destruction. In the spirit of ancient adventure novels, this fictional clash of good and evil abounds with visions, omens, and goddesses and, like its predecessor, is based on archaeologist Marija Gimbutas' goddess-centered studies of old Europe. With an ending that readies readers for another in a series, it deserves a place on the shelves next to the works of Jean Auel. Marrah is forced to put her convictions and courage to the supreme test—as she risks everything she and her people hold dear—in a struggle that will change the prehistoric world forever…. "A heart-pounding evocation whose lessons lie in the hearts of the characters."-Thomas Moore, author of Care of the Soul. "Literary grace and powerful storytelling."-Theodore Roszak
About Mary Mackey
MARY MACKEY is the author of thirteen novels and six collections of poetry. Related through her father's family to Mark Twain, she graduated from Harvard and received a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Michigan. In her twenties, she lived in the rain forests of Costa Rica. For a number of years, she has been traveling to Europe and Brazil and incorporating her experiences into her fiction and poetry. Mackey’s novels, which have sold over a million copies, have appeared on the New York Times Bestseller List and been translated into twelve foreign languages including Japanese, Hebrew, Greek, Russian, and Finnish. At present, she lives in northern California with her husband Angus Wright, and is Professor Emeritus of English at California State University. To learn more about her you are invited to visit her webpage at: www.marymackey.com. She can also be found on Facebook.
