Author Of The Broken World Releases New Novel

Online, November 22, 2013 (Newswire.com) - Brent Hightower, author of "The Broken World," a novel set in New Mexico during the turbulent 1960's. His upbringing in a troubled Irish Catholic family in New Mexico at that time inspired that novel, and led to a further search for the historical roots of the fracturing of his family and his society.

This search sent him back 1,500 years to fabled Byzantium, the fall of the classical word, the onset of the dark ages, and to a story of love and intrigue with profound consequences that reverberate to this day.

There have been many stories claiming to unravel the mystery so many have instinctively felt lies buried in the shrouded Dark Ages. This novel unveils a genuine mystery, powerful enough to have profound affects on society to this day - one that is both frightening, obscure, and hidden in plain sight.

"Ode To Belladonna" is the story of Simplicious Simplisticus, the last surviving scholar of the Platonic Academy at Athens, whose attraction to philosophy and whose single moral failing draw him into the major events of his age and into deadly conflict with Theodora, Empress of Byzantium. It is a tale of love and hatred, evil and enlightenment, and of the battle between the desire for freedom and an all consuming obsession with power and domination.

Set fifteen hundred years ago in fabled Byzantium, the events bear a startling resemblance to those of our own day and reveal the tenuous nature of freedom and the terrible consequences of its loss.