Timbers of the LadyAvailable now
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About this book
Gubla prospers on cedar exports to the Nile Valley. When a poor highland harvest collides with an Egyptian envoy's steep quota and a prototype hull becomes the focus of sabotage, corruption, and political leverage, five lives intersect around one season's critical shipment—until a Mediterranean storm forces reckoning.
Among them are Nadim the shipwright, who tests copper-clamped joints the elders refuse to trust; priestess Shira, reading thin smoke from sacrifice fires; Mallku Kemet's advisor Hannu, secretly routing prime timber to highland allies; Egyptian scribe-trader Meri, carrying a quota scroll that demands double the usual cedar; and Yara, daughter of a merchant lord who watches opportunity and gossip arrive together.
Set in Gubla (Byblos), ca. 3000 BCE, Timbers of the Lady is historical fiction about trade interdependence with Egypt, cedar sustainability against short-term wealth, temple authority, and the price of innovation when a storm breaks one vessel and spares another.