Dark Blue Almost Black: Laudate Deum

Marcus is a child slave turned soldier in the army of Emperor Constantine, A.D. 312. His heroism in battle earns him an important assignment to Carthage, capitol of Africa, where he is unwittingly embroiled in the tensions growing amongst the Christians of Africa and Numidia following Emperor Constantine's Edict of Milan. There he is cast into the Horrors of captivity and torture at the hands of a suicide cult of crazed Berbers and deserters from Rome's many Legions.

Olivia, the young daughter of the wealthy Patrician who once owned Marcus, must flee Italia because of her father's misplaced loyalty to the recently defeated Tyrant of Rome, Emperor Maxentius. In the hills of Etruria she discovers the ancient virtues of Rome's esteemed women of old. In Carthage she is granted a place in the household of Carthage's most wealthy person, the influential and highly controversial widow Lucilla (a real historical character whose role in the events of this book is critical).

While neither knows the other has survived Rome's recent civil war, the bond between Marcus and Olivia matures beyond that of simple childhood playmates. With the help of a mysterious Tuareg 'Blue Man of the Desert' and a Phoenician mariner, the greatest love story of antiquity culminates in an epic struggle in Numidia's formidable mountain top city of Cirta.

Dark Blue Almost Black is a novel of historical fiction, sequel to John Olsen's first novel, Ishmael's Burden. Exhaustively researched and cross-referenced historical events are woven together to form an accurate historical context in which this great love story unfolds.