Domitian Stories

70,000 years ago, the wolf-dog Bites Back first encounters humans. It doesn’t go well. And when Bites Back dies, he learns that his choices are just beginning. He comes back as Dyak—a hunter-shepherd dog bonded to the boy Attu, whose tribe is crossing the great land bridge over the Bering Straits. Then he's Tekhe, a small saluki-like pet of a master embalmer to the Pharaoh Tutankhamen. Then, a sleeve-dog in the Chinese court of 800 BCE. Over the next 3,000 years, in Imperial Rome, medieval Afghanistan and France, Shakespeare's London, the arid north country of colonial Mexico, the muddy shell-shocked trenches of WWI, space-age Russia, the United States, and 21st Century Canada, Jack--the eternal dog--has a new master or mistress in each incarnation. But is Jack the one who’s changing or is he the agent of change? Why does Jack come back?

A hundred and forty-three years after the murder of Julius Caesar, the mortar is barely dry between the great Travertine slabs that hold up the Flavian Amphitheater—the Colosseum of Rome. Lucius Viterbus, a young poet from the country, has a horrible job cleaning up after bestial and gladiatorial “games.” In the grisly remains of the Ludi Romani, he finds a giant mastiff, stunned but alive, The brutish head of his crew, Baractes, wants to kill the dog. But Lucius revives the beast and takes him home—to a stable in the worst slum of central Rome. Soon, Lucius and Livilla—an independent, but lonely 14-year-old girl who studies Greek with the stable owner—establish a thriving business, leveraging Jace’s strength and fierce appearance. But they haven’t planned on the greed, lust, and violence that winds around the lives of the people of Rome as surely as the Tiber winds through the city itself. One by one, the main characters are separated and the future becomes darker and darker. But in Lucius, Livilla, and Jace, the old Roman virtues—bravery and loyalty—are strong. Whatever the outcome, there will be mighty struggles and proud deeds.