Veronica and the Cave of the Wind

About the Book

Veronica grew up accustomed to being stared at. If her steel gray eyes and shocking mane of red hair were not enough, her ability to read the thoughts of people she came in contact with unnerved strangers and acquaintances alike. When the country's social welfare department got involved, the eleven-year-old girl tested out beyond genius level and nearly put the test administrator into a mental hospital.

Her life-long friend, Billy Swift Fox, was equally astonishing- materializing our of thin air and departing by the same method. Veronica's mother, herself adept at magic, was not perturbed by the children, but her father, who didn't even beleive in magic found them difficult to deal with.

But Barbara Wilde, her mother, carried a depressing secret within her, not knowing how to explain to her husband, the only man she ever loved, what was likely to happen to the daughter he adored. Only Barbara knew that Veronica, by a force much greater than family love and attachment, would be compelled to enter the Cave of the Wind. Furthermore, Barbara had the premonition that Veronica's trials in the Cave would far surpass anything she had faced when she entered the cave as a young girl.

Grandfather White Feather had brought Billy up to expect to enter the cave after his twelth birthday, but the old man had no idea that he would never see his adored grandson outside the cave again.

Once outside the Cave of the Wind, Veronica and Billy experienced fantastic struggles with evil forces opposing them- forces that conspired to separate them in efforts to defeat the two staunch children. Inside the cave, time took on an entirely new dimension. Age twelve when they entered, by the time they were ready to leave they were in their teens. Yet the whole adventure seemed only like days to them.

Theirs was to be the last trial within the cave. The "very ancient ones" who had watched over the cave for thousands of years were planning at last to leave, destroying the cave in the process. Veronica and Billy had to pass their trials and make a momentous decision before the cave collapsed on itself, forever removing its magic from a disbelieving world.

About the Author

J. Hamilton has been a teacher of English as a Foreign Language for the past sixteen years, having worked in Texas, Saudi Arabia and Thailand during that time.

In the 1970's, he wrote a weekly humor column for a small newspaper in central Texas where he grew up.

He has written plays for, and directed and acted in community theaters for many years and insists that drama experiences has been as useful to his teaching EFL as his degree in English and Speech from Pan American University.

He currently is writing the sequel to Veronica and the Cave of the Wind tentatively titled Veronica and Billy in the New World.