The Wind in the Embers: A Story of the Fall of Rome

Finalist for the prestigious Chanticleer International Book Awards' Chaucer Award for Early Historical Fiction

The amazing true story of the only woman to ever rule the Roman Empire, based on the real life person and events

While many women wielded power during the course of the Roman Empire, only one ruled in her own right without constraints. Galla Placidia came to the throne as the daughter of Emperor Theodosius and the sister of Emperor’s Honorius and Arcadius. Her husband Emperor Constantius III died before her, leaving her an infant son, a boy destined to take the throne as Emperor Valentinian III. However, until he came of age, she was permitted to rule in his place. It was not an easy task. This is her story.

To survive Galla Placidia had to balance the expectations of those who looked to her for leadership with those who expected her to keep her place as a woman. She pretended to be soft, sensitive, and naïve. She was anything but. She was shrewd and adaptable, and she kept at her side a powerful ally in Flavius Aetius, the chief commander of Rome’s armies and a man of unquestioned resolution. Together they held the Empire together against external threats and internal revolts. But the time was fast approaching when Galla would have to hand off the reins of power to her son, eighteen-year-old Placidius. To advise him she wrote him a long letter and had it delivered to him as he journeyed east to Constantinople to wed his cousin. Placidius was immediately suspicious.

The Wind in the Embers unfolds the story of Galla Placidia’s remarkable life as related to her son through the letter, from her kidnapping by a barbarian king, through the scandal that drove her into exile, to her tempestuous romance with a dashing yet power-hungry rogue. Galla lays it all on the line for Placidius in order to prepare him for the trials ahead, but hidden within her story is a warning to be on the lookout for imposters who may try to mislead him, a warning that calls into question the authenticity of the letter itself.

As the caravan draws closer to Constantinople, murder and betrayal transpire, and Placidius is faced with a vexing question. Is his mother the woman he thinks she is, or is she a rival threatening to deprive him of the throne?

Malcolm David Logan is the author of The Wind in the Embers, the first book in The Amulet Series about the Fall of Rome. He is a writer, teacher, blogger, and amateur historian. He lives in Chicago.