Chartreuse

Historically founded on a sixteenth century alchemist's elixir of long life (and the basis for the French liqueur), CHARTREUSE is a story of supernatural transformation; of the elixir's ingredients on which a Pope's life rests; of a young man's destiny and the chain of world events that lead to his final, wrenching choice.

The central character, Blaise, is summoned to Switzerland once he learns he has inherited a parchment containing the recipe for nothing less than the elixir of life. He's directed to a distiller in the French countryside - a Carthusian monk at La Grande Chartreuse - for he alone knows how "to execute the formula to the greater glory of God and humanity."

At the same time, someone wants the Pope dead and has infected him with a fatal disease. So the race is on: to save the Pope; to see which woman will accompany Blaise during his travails - his current lover, or a flame from his past; to discover if the culprit can keep the elixir from reaching the Vatican.

CHARTREUSE is fast-paced without being frantic. And yet, in the drawing power of the plot's twists and turns, so much more than a plot goes on: a romance, a thriller, a source book of homeopathy, miraculous events, a spiritual journey. It's a search for a cure; a search for a moral code; a search for identity. With CHARTREUSE, Joseph Roccasalvo has written a novel about the sacred and the profane - a contemporary symbol of our 21st century lives.

Joseph Roccasalvo is a standing member of the Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard, and holds a Ph.D. from that university. He lives and writes in New York City.