Legion

Author: William Altimari

ISBN 0-9728726-1-2 (hardcover)

296 pages

"Legion" is a stunning recreation of the life of Roman soldiers at a fort on the Gallic frontier in the late First Century B.C. Centurion Quintus Flavius Rufio returns to Gaul near the Rhine to finish his career with the Twenty-fifth Legion. An invasion by the Germans is imminent, and the veteran Rufio takes command of a century with many recruits whom he must train on the eve of the German onslaught.
Rufio's return to Gaul has a wider significance as well. Twenty years earlier, he accidentally killed a young Gallic woman in battle. Still haunted by this, he is confronted by her daughter, orphaned as an infant and now an adult, and his search for redemption takes an unexpected turn in his relationship with her.
"Legion" climaxes with the outnumbered Romans attacking the Germans in a savage battle as the barbarians storm into Gaul in a war of annihilation.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

William Altimari was born and reared in Philadelphia, where he attended Catholic school and received a degree in Anthropology/Archaeology from the University of Pennsylvania. He has worked for the Philadelphia Zoological Garden, has excavated fossils in the Canadian badlands for the Provincial Museum of Alberta, and has helped to design and construct a dinosaur exhibit for the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. He is a herpetologist for the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum and has written numerous articles and essays on herpetology and paleontology and is a member of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology. He and his wife, Barbara, live in Pima County, Arizona.