Everyone knows the story of Romeo and Juliet. Through the mists of time another story comes to us, equally vivid and tragic, of a young Spartan Princess by the name of Helen. She loves and is beloved by Prince Menelaus. But they cannot be together.
In that far-off age of royal women of Greece are the keepers of the faith for the Old Religion of a Mother Goddess, primeval in her dark mysteries and yet all-powerful. But Menelaus is bound by a sacred oath to his brother, King Agamemnon, who shows no respect for the Goddess. Agamemnon's Mycenean empire is pillaging the altars of the Goddess for bronze to make weapons.
The Goddess warns Helen that if she marries Menelaus: “You and your King, and yea even your children and your children's children, will curse you for it and even all Hellas.” When Helen says bravely, “I would choose him over my life,” she brings upon herself the abduction by Paris that overturns not only Troy but an entire civilization.
In this prize-winning novel Linda Cargill breathes life into a vanished age.
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What makes this novel outstanding is its characterization. Helen, the protagonist, is creatively drawn and moves logically ... to a mature, understanding, strong, humanistic woman. Menelaus is a macho of great pride and honesty. Torn between his need for kingly power and his deep, all-encompassing love for an equally strong-minded woman ... makes Menelaus a believable, viable creation.
–Henry Musmano, National Writer's Contest
First-novelist
Cargill recounts the fall of Troy from Helen's point of view –
in this spirited page-turner that plaed in the 1986 National
Writers Book Contest.
Though brought up to inherit the role of her mother, Queen Leda, as keeper of the ancient mother-goddess cult increasingly suppressed by the reigning kings, beautiful Helen of Sparta intially fails to hear the Goddess of Heaven's voice within her. And no wonder – the hormone-bedeviled teen-ager lusts after handsome Meneleus, whose family has offended the Goddess by looting her temples for bronze. Upon Leda's death, the Goddess offers Helen the choice of marrying Meneleus at the cost of a life of misery and the destruction of Sparta, or sacrificing him in favor of older, craggy faced Odysseus – the “wisest among Achaeans” – with whom Helen would enjoy a long, happy reign as Sparta's queen. Naturally, Helen chooses Meneleus, and thus follow betrayals, misunderstandings, and intrigues that lead to the destruction of Sparta and Troy, Kidnapped by Paris, forced to marry him and bear sons by his cleverer brother, Deiphobus, Helen concentrates on protecting the hordes who worship her – whether as the Goddess of Earth in Sparta or as Inanna in Troy. Her efforts to play out the Goddess's maternal role are at cross purposes with the male rulers' ambitions, however – and constant misunderstandings result. Herding her subjects out of besieged Sparta, she is accused of abandoning her post. Refusing to abandon her Trojan sons when Meneleus arrives to rescue her, she commits treason. Then, attempting to free the Trojan people from their despotic rulers by allowing the Trojan horse within the city walls, she betrays her Trojan husband.
Cargill's portrayal of Helen as supporter of the people and clever, if misunderstood, female in a world of men – as opposed to the more familiar fickle housewide – keeps this classic, action-packed tale bubbling until the last huzzah. An auspicious beginning – and a delightful read.
–11/1/90
A superbly produced first title for Cheops Books who have set out to publish only pre-1914 historical fiction dealing directly with the authors (i.e. no agents need apply). The editors produce a set of very useful guidelines for would-be authors to join the list alongside Linda Cargill.
In this novel Linda has woven together strands of mythology, romance and adventure in a vigorous direct style of writing along the lines of a classical tragedy. Characterization is sketched rather than deeply drawn, the central theme being the exploration of the feminine archetype within a community and the fear evoked by its attempts at full expression. Linda Cargill creates a dynamic pace to the action making this a readable and exciting recreation of the Trojan saga.
–The Ammonite
After many centuries, Homer's Iliad remains a monument in world literature. Its dramatic intensity is maintained by the ever-present “moïra,” the Greek concept of fate, a fate that spares no one. Greeks as well as Trojans succumb to its cruel demands. The very few who during the siege of Troy escape it – such as Agamemnon or Odysseus – will embark on a long journey home filled with trials and eventually ending with death.
In her novel, To Follow the Goddess, Cargill gives – while recreating the Iliad's atmosphere – a new dimension to the main characters. Helen, Menelaus, Agamemnon, Deiphobus, Paris, Odysseus, are “seen” by Helen, who is the voice of the narrative. Everyone of them is led to his/her implacable destiny by an omnipotent Mother Goddess whose fierce exigencies remind us of the merciless decisions of the gods in Homer's Iliad.
The reader of Cargill's novel becomes ultimately convinced that the wars are futile and atrocious, and that the gods play with men an infamous game. A constant sense of doom prevails and confers an indisputable tragic aura to the tribulations of Helen. Helen, who begins as Queen of Sparta, becomes after her abduction by Paris a Trojan captive to be reinstated in the end as the wife of Menelaus, king of Sparta.
The suspense and interest are maintained by the author's delicate analysis of the main characters – particularly of Helen – as well as the many scenes and descriptions supported by the Homeric tradition.
“Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes.” These words written by the Roman poet Virgil, also the prophetic words of the Trojan high priest Laocoön, fall on dead ears. The Trojans bring inside their walls the horse, and with it the destruction and doom fall on the city of Troy. This most poignant moment in the history of the war gives Cargill an opportunity to present a convincing account of a national tragedy: Trojan warriors are slaughtered by victorious Greeks who unleash their brutality on Trojan women, seen later in an endless flow of captives waiting for an imminent journey to humiliation and slavery.
In conclusion, Cargill's novel has many merits. While respecting the Homeric background of the Iliad, the author makes Homer's work more accessible and perhaps more inviting to the modern reader by making Helen the voice of an epic literary work.
Cargill also succeeds in recreating Helen's character. Helen becomes in the novel the symbol of the eternal woman, the prize of war and the prime victim of wars declared by men since the beginning of time. Her beauty, the epic proportions of her dramatic destiny unceasingly dictated by the Mother Goddess, confer her, a mortal, a greatness that will capture the mind of the reader.
– Pierre Noël Fortis
They may not be the Sherman brothers who brought you many a Disney tune, Jeff and Beau Bridges, or even the Lemmon sisters of yore, but Linda Bognar Cargill and her sister Karen Bognar have decided to see what fruits collaboration can bring. Their results have just been published by a new small press, Cheops Books, in the form of a novel, To Follow the Goddess. It tells the story of the Trojan War from the point of view of Helen.
“You don't realize until you do it yourself for the first time,” says Linda, “but there are enough jobs in the production of a book to keep a whole factory of people working!” Fortunately, though, the jobs are divided basically between drawing and writing. Karen provided the artwork while Linda did the writing.
“No one knows exactly what Helen looked like,” says Karen, “so I had a lot of license in doing a full-length portrait for the front cover. Believe it or not, she was probably a blond.” Linda's research turned up information showing that the Mycenaean peoples who lived when Helen did (about 1250 B.C.) were not the modern Greeks of today, who arrived according to most scholars during the Dorian Invasion. The Mycenaeans might well have been light-skinned, fair-haired, and even blue-eyed. Certianly many prominent Greeks and Romans of the classical period were. Alexander the Great was a blond, and Nero had red hair and freckles!
The budget for a first book by a new press wasn't enormous, so Karen had to be inventive. She couldn't hire a model to sketch. She did the next best thing and dressed herself up as Helen! “Now I'm not a bathing beauty, but I'm good at improvising,” Karen says. She bought a blond wig, and Alice Bognar, Linda and Karen's mother, sewed the costume. A friend photographed Karen, and she used the photo as a model.
It was a long way to the publication of a first book for both sisters. After graduation from Carnegie-Mellon University as a fine arts major with a B.F.A., Karen has supported herself in Philadelphia by a series of odd jobs while she painted and sold portraits and still life paintings. Linda attended Bryn Mawr, Duke, and the University of Virginia as an English major. In recent years she has been battling with the New York publishing industry from her home in Charlottesville, Va. to get To Follow the Goddess published. “Every publisher seems to hate the word first novel,” Linda says. Even though the book placed in 1086 in the National Writers Contest, no New York house would take a chance on it. Many agents tried to sell it, and many editors loved it – but they could never get the approval of their sales departments. “They spend all their money giving million-dollar advances to best-selling writers,” Linda says.
After trying 150 New York literary agents, Linda finally happened upon the small press scene, where much of what is creative in publishing today is taking place. Cheops Books decided to take her on as its first author in a line of historical novels. Now Goddess will be distributed to independent bookstores nationwide by the wholesalers Inland Books.
Linda and Karen are the daughters of Bettis Senior Engineer Larry E. Bognar. Linda won a Westinghouse Scholarship in 1973, and Karen won in the Bettis Art Show.
–Bettis Ship's Log
