None

Told from the standpoint of a teenager who is a "gifted child", made lonely by his extraordinary mental abilities, this is a coming-of-age story like no other.Tony Bellomo, an Italo-American born in New York, feels different from everyone around him and returns to Sicily, the land of his ancestors. He is the last descendant of a thousand year-old Sicilian family whose fortunes have collapsed in the 20th century. Tony is special: by the time he's 13, he's finished high school and has a job as a video game engineer. Five years later, he suffers from burnout and goes to Sicily looking for his roots, to discover the world his aristocratic father, now dead, used to tell him about. What he finds is something very different. Walking into an abandoned palazzo in Syracuse, he falls in a Time Trap where his ancestors, all historical characters who helped shape Sicily's History, are milling about waiting for Judgment Day. To pass the time, they re-enact in short plays the decisive moments in their lives and in so doing, give Tony unique insights into his own heredity.In Flying in the Past, Book 1 of the Phoenix Heritage, Tony discovers he is closer to some of his ancestors than to his own father. For the first time in his life he falls in love - but the object of his love is a famous 18th century beauty, the Duchess of Floridia, who became the second wife of Ferdinand I, King of Two-Sicilies. What can Tony learn from a woman who died two hundred years ago? Can he take her back to his own time?This is only the first step in Tony's tortuous road to self-discovery. In the next two books, Into the Fire and Out of the Ashes, more unexpected threats come his way, testing his abilities. Each time, he learns something more about himself and grows into the man he will eventually become. But something inevitably happens to challenge him... Will he manage to shed the past and make his life his own? All three books in the series address the question of genetic inheritance and cultural heritage, raising the central issue of nature vs. nurture. Are we the products of our family's past, and if so, how much freedom of choice is left? Is our heredity a destiny we cannot escape? Can a family rise again from its ashes like the famed, mythical phoenix ?Note to the Reader: THE PHOENIX HERITAGE series is a completely new and revised edition of the FEAR OF THE PAST trilogy that was first published on Amazon in 2011 (still available as a single volume containing all three books). Both spring from a much earlier version in Italian published by a local press under the title Un Amore Dimenticato (A Forgotten Love).Editorial ReviewsReview 1. from Sicilian literary critics when an early version of the book came out in Italian in 2007:* To dream with open eyes through Time...(Pino Nucifora in « Diario Siracusa »)* emotional, but above all fantastic, surreal, meta-psychical, out of time and reality... (Arturo Messina in « Libertà »)* An authentic excursion in the past... (Lucia Corsale in « La Sicilia )2. Selected reviews when it first came out in English under the title Forget the Past:* Author Nougat uses a supernatural device that is reminiscent of Dante's Purgatory... A large cast of characters is developed with sensitivity and insight, a rogues gallery of heroes and sinners.(Author R.Lee Holz)* The book is a bit Alice in Wonderland, a bit Dante's Inferno, and a lot about coming of age and self-discovery. (Author Joseph Badal)* The stories were easy to visualize and I would love to see this book made into a movie (Author Suzy Turner)* a beautifully written, very visual and entertaining story. Good read not only for teenagers but also more grown up people who are on a lookout for something different... ( Film Maker Magda Olchawska)* What I liked most is that this book is symbolic of universal emotions and human foibles, sometimes making them larger than life...This book will read easily and keep you thinking (Author Karen Rose Smith)