Vale of Shadows

In Rob Dakin's modern thriller, Vale of Shadows, readers are introduced to 20th Century Istanbul, six teenagers, and a corpse. It is the 1950's, and young Altin Guler understands that murder is afoot, having witnessed what appeared to be a killing of supernatural devise with five of his friends on the dark streets of Istanbul. Never in his imagination could he have expected to be thrust into a drama so frightening that he would leave his beloved Turkey, and flee to America. Mystery and unanswered questions abound until, decades later, when his son Jeff Smith, returns to Turkey as part of an earthquake relief team. Jeff reconnects with his college roommate, Orhan Aziz, a student from Turkey. It soon becomes terrifyingly clear that their friendship was no accident, and that their destinies have been intertwined for a soul, diabolical purpose. Jeff and Orhan find themselves in a deadly struggle for survival. A struggle that began five hundred years earlier during the Ottoman invasion of Albania when a curse was cast against the two families of Jeff and Orhan. Orhan's uncle Umet was also one of the six teenagers who witnessed the murder, and confides in the young men the story of the events that have brought them to this point in time. Jeff was drawn by destiny to come back to his father's Turkey, as the effects of the curse happen cyclicly once in a generation, and the recurrence of that cycle was imminent. As the story unfolds, the young men begin to understand that their only objective is survival. When they meet Aubrey and Jonathan, the four become trapped in a web of violence, with their only defense a clan of Roma sworn to protect the family of Orhan. In this gripping speculative fiction fraught with mysticism and revenge, love and determination, readers are swept into a vortex of treachery. Will the four survive? And what is this curse that they finally confront in the isolated mountains of Albania?