Between Two Gates
A Young Man’s Quest Toward Birth
Now Available
The story unfolds with the tragic demise of Samuel, a young thirty-two year-old man whose life is cut short by a fentanyl-tainted Percocet. From the moment of his passing, his soul embarks on an extraordinary journey, driven by a deep desire to understand the cause behind his tragic end.
Structured in three captivating acts, the first act introduces Samuel as he is greeted by his guiding grandfather in the soul world. Together, they embark on a profound exploration of Samuel's past life, delving into moments of joy and the challenging circumstances that ultimately led to his devastating downfall.
In act two, Samuel's soul family enlists his help to rescue his great-great-grandfather, taken by the soulless creature known as the rasha. Samuel's quest sends him through the treacherous five realms of Gehenna, where he confronts his past misdeeds and undergoes a transformative purification of his soul.
The final act witnesses Samuel's awe-inspiring visits to the seven planetary spheres, where he encounters captivating divine beings. Angels, archangels, and fairies bestow profound insights upon Samuel, unraveling the secrets of the universe and allowing him to reconcile his karmic footprint. Through this enlightening adventure, Samuel gains clarity about his significant life's purpose.
Between Two Gates offers an enchanting exploration of the soul world as Samuel unravels the mysteries of existence and embarks on a transformative spiritual odyssey from death to birth. Readers will reflect upon the intricate tapestry of Samuel's soul life, the redemptive power of karma, and the profound potential for a new life filled with family, friends, and love.
MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW
Book Reviews, Book Lover Resources, Advice for Writers and Publishers
Between Two Gates is a novel of visionary fiction that opens with a death. This might seem an unlikely starting point for a novel, but this story represents a new beginning as the thirty-two-year-old protagonist's life stops from drug abuse and then experiences a transformation in the afterlife.
Samuel's spirit is welcomed by his grandfather, and the two embark on a quest that embraces Samuel's transitioning "...from your life on the Earth to the next stage of your existence."
The structure of the plot takes the form of a three-act production (sans the usual drama screenplay of character calls and responses). It features a wide-ranging spiritual flow, from Samuel's calling to traverse Gehenna's five realms to his confrontation with disparate forms of heaven, hell, and purgatory.
His wise grandfather calls his current abode a "...good place. A natural place where we continue to exist until that time when we’re called upon to make our return.”
Samuel's task is to embrace his destiny, rescue his great-great-grandfather from dangerous entity Solomon, and confront his own karmic heritage while fielding angels and fairies alike.
The spiritual and ethereal nature of this metaphysical work requires of its readers a mind open to non-traditional concepts of the afterlife. Those harboring such inclinations will find Between Two Gates a wide-ranging, mind-hopping journey that offers tantalizing insights into destiny and life purpose:
“You keep trying to lure me. But you should know I am not the same naive soul I was when I arrived. I’ve learned much already, and you should know this: I want nothing to do with you or your kind.”
Solomon laughed. “You think you’ve changed; that’s nonsense. We’ve known each other from previous lifetimes, and we’re destined for more. You have no power to break this karmic cycle.”
Readers who also harbor affection for philosophical reflection receive this in droves as Samuel confronts others and self in an afterlife journey that cements his karma and the impact of "doomed desires" that affect and direct his world.
The result is a powerful novel of realization, redemption, and afterlife conundrums that is especially recommended for audiences interested in considering the lasting impact of their choices and the power of love. Samuel's heroic and epic struggles play out on an afterlife stage replete with thought-provoking insights that will prove as suitable for book club and spirituality group debates as for individual contemplation.
Libraries and readers seeking a visionary story that juxtaposes adventures with afterlife considerations will find Between Two Gates compelling and hard to put down.
~ Diane Donovan - Midwest Book Review
AUDIBLE LIBRARY
The nazarite
the untold story of samson & delilah
Novella - Premiering March 2023
NOW AVAILABLE
The Nazarite spins the tale of the great strongman and biblical hero—Samson. Able to slay a lion with his bare hands, defeat an army of one-thousand strong with the jawbone of an ass, lift the mighty Gates of Gaza, plus many more captivating triumphs. It’s a fantastic story of great and outrageous feats, accompanied with an intriguing love affair between Samson the Israelite and Delilah the Philistine. It was this compelling relationship that has raised many brows and questions.
Why did Samson share his sacred secret with the vixen—Delilah? A secret so dear, that his life depended upon keeping it private. Yet he confides to Delilah, and by doing so is taken captive by his people’s existential enemy. His eyes are gored out and is sentenced to be sacrificed to the Philistine god—Dagon.
Can we imagine Delilah, armed with nothing more than her exquisite beauty, and cunning deceit, enticing the lustful Samson by luring him beyond the boundaries of their intimacy? Why else would the Nazarite give up the key to his great strength, unless enticed by forbidden, erotic desires?
The novella is written through the eyes of Samson, and a Philistine scribe—Mizar, who’s given the task of writing upon parchment the events of Samson's incredible life.
"…Samson is not a leader of an army, like Barak, Gideon, or Jephthah. He is, instead, a kind of a Robin Hood or Superman, conducting a one-man campaign against the enemy and winning his way by brute strength, rather than by skill or intelligence…"~ Isaac Asimov from Asimov’s Guide to the Bible, a two volume set published in 1988
About the NOVELIST
Neil Perry Gordon is a highly regarded and prolific novelist acclaimed for his historical and metaphysical fiction. With eleven novels and a novella to his name, his latest work, "Between Two Gates – A Young Man's Quest Towards Birth," showcases his literary prowess. Gordon's writing has garnered commendation from esteemed publications like Kirkus, Midwest Book Review, and Book Viral, while his readers on platforms such as Amazon and Goodreads have also praised his works with countless positive reviews.
Neil's education at the Green Meadow Waldorf School played a significant role in shaping his passion for writing. There, he imbibed the belief that music, dance, theater, writing, literature, legends, and myths were not mere subjects to be studied, but experiences to be embraced and absorbed.
In terms of his writing process, Neil adopts an organic approach. Rather than relying on a detailed outline, he begins with a premise for his characters and allows the story to unfold naturally. This method gives rise to unforeseen twists and captivating outcomes that have captivated readers. His novels strike a remarkable balance between character development and exhilarating action, ensuring a dynamic pace that keeps readers engrossed.
Neil Perry Gordon's dedication to his craft and his ability to craft engaging narratives have firmly established him as an accomplished author in the realms of historical and metaphysical fiction. With each new publication, he continues to enthrall readers with his imaginative storytelling and insightful explorations of the human experience.
Novels by
neil perry gordon
the bomb squad
Clash of the Patriots
At the stroke of midnight, a devastating explosion at Black Tom Island, an armaments depot, rocks New York City awake; and so begins this story of two patriots in World War I, each willing to put his life on the line in order to achieve a glorious victory for his cause.
Serving the Fatherland is Dr. Harold Schwartz, administrator of the prestigious Ellis Island Immigrant Hospital and a German spy. Along with his father, a dealer in lethal weapons and a lifelong friend of Kaiser Wilhelm, Schwartz is hell-bent on distracting the Americans from entering the war.
Meanwhile, the British Secret Intelligence Service recruits highly regarded New York City police detective Max Rothman to assemble a team of German-speaking specialists, known as the Bomb Squad. Their mission is to investigate the sudden surge of German espionage activity wreaking havoc along the Eastern Seaboard and among steamships attempting to cross the Atlantic.
The Bomb Squad follows these men’s exploits through an interconnecting tale of love, loss, friendship, and betrayal, stretching from American shores to the epicenter of German power during a time when the world is at war.
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A cobbler's tale
Jewish Immigrants Story of Survival, from Eastern Europe to New York's Lower East Side
Book One
A Cobbler’s Tale is an adventure story about Pincus Potasznik, a second-generation Jewish cobbler, born in a small shtetl in the province of Galicia, part of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire.
In 1910, at the historic height of the massive Eastern European immigration wave to the New World, Pincus decides to leave behind his pregnant wife, and three small children, in order to seek a new life for his family in the burgeoning Lower East Side of Manhattan.
On his traumatic voyage across the Atlantic Ocean on the SS Amerika steamship, Pincus meets Jakob Adler, a young man running from an accidental murder of a notorious crime boss in Warsaw.
The story also explores the challenges of pregnant Clara Potasznik as she does her best to protect her family, while the bloodiest battles of World War I explode within miles of her family home, a small village called Krzywcza.
Moshe, the young son of Pincus and Clara Potasznik, discovers his divine ability to foretell dire events, and to offer real comfort those in pain, taking the reader into the wisdom and mystery surrounding the ancient Jewish mysticism, known as Kabbalah.
A Cobbler’s Tale is a story of a family’s survival against tremendous odds.
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moon flower
A Seventeenth Century Tale of a Young Man's Search for the Great Spirit
It's the year 1675, and eighteen-year-old Lukas Pietersen, a young boy from the Dutch-controlled territory of New Amsterdam, is about to consume the ceremonial substance known as moon flower. The potent seeds from this nighttime blooming plant, prepared and administered by a shaman, will cause Lukas to lose his memory and thus begin his quest of becoming a warrior of the Pequawket tribe.
From the New World to the city of Amsterdam, down to the slave coast of West Africa, and across the Atlantic Ocean to the slave mart of Charles Town, Moon Flower follows Lukas as he meets chiefs, shamans, warriors, and the English army on his journey to forge a connection with the Great Spirit and battle a fearsome evil being called the Wendigo.
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the righteous one
A Cobbler's Journey into the Dreamworld and Beyond
Book Two
The Righteous One is the story of Moshe the cobbler, a gentle, sixty-year-old tzaddik—a righteous and saintly Jew—who is called upon to rekindle his divine connection to the Almighty in order to destroy the notorious New York gangster and rasha Solomon Blass, a man who uses his power of foreseeing events via his vivid dreams to advance his own financial interests.
While Solomon and his son, Myron, seek to control much of Manhattan—its biggest businesses, its police department, and its city government—they find themselves embroiled in conflict with numerous powerful people from both their waking life and the dream world, where Moshe has begun training with the descendants of an ancient mystical spirit for his inevitable confrontation with Solomon.
As the final battle approaches, the divide between good and evil becomes ever clearer and each character faces the consequences of his past, present, and future actions. Will Solomon’s wily tenacity prevail, or will Moshe be strong enough to destroy the rasha’s wicked soul?
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Hope city
The Alaskan Adventures of Percy Hope
Book One
Hope City is the adventure story of Samuel Rothman and his best friend, Liam Kampen, two teenage boys from San Francisco who, in the summer of 1898, venture into the goldfields of the Alaskan wilderness.
Warned by his father to conceal his Jewish heritage from the ruffians he may encounter, Samuel changes his name to the less conspicuous Percy Hope. This fateful decision gives a yet-unnamed mining village a new identity and catapults Percy into a world where the good and the righteous must face greedy and ruthless adversaries.
Along a waterway known as Turnagain Arm, the newly named Hope City and the more established Sunrise are like opposite sisters. The good and virtuous Hope, with a Catholic church led by the influential Reverend O’Hara, admonishes residents against committing the seven deadly sins. In Sunrise, villainous saloon owner Magnus Vega tempts prospectors with whiskey, gambling, and women.
Hope City weaves the tale of a young man falling down a proverbial rabbit hole of unexpected toils and hardships and struggling to find his way back out, amid a wild and unforgiving environment where ambitious men and women seek their fortunes.
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Sadie's Sin
The Zwi Migdal's Reign of Terror
Sadie Wollman, a young Jewess in 1924 Warsaw, Poland, has fallen in love with the handsome university professor—Alexander Kaminski. But when her traditional parents learn about this possible unholy matrimony to a gentile, they hastily arrange a brokered marriage to a wealthy Argentine Jewish business man—Ezra Porkevitch.
Believing they sent their daughter off to a glamorous life of wealth and luxury, this young woman instead faces a new reality of becoming a Polaca, a sex slave to the Zwi Migdal, a Jewish organized-crime group trafficking young women into forced prostitution throughout brothels in Buenos Aires.
When her lover Alex, a war hero of Poland, learns of the deception, he, along with his life-long friend Jan Mazur, seek to rescue Sadie from the grips of this wicked group of men protected by the Argentine political and law enforcement establishment.
Sadie’s Sin is an epic-romantic tale of an innocent woman's torment as she is sold to the city's most prestigious brothel—The Tango, and the hero's journey across three continents, seeking her rescue.
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cape nome
The Alaskan Adventures of Percy Hope
Book Two
It’s 1898, and one of history’s most abundant gold discoveries has shaken awake the desolate city of Cape Nome, Alaska. This monumental find by John Brynteson, Jafet Lindeberg, and Erik Lindblom earns them the moniker of the Three Lucky Swedes.
News of their good fortune spreads swiftly, and by the summer of 1900, tens of thousands of dreamers trek over land and by sea to the mines surrounding Anvil Creek and upon the Bering Sea beaches, where gold deposits pepper the soft sands.
Cape Nome chronicles the continuing adventures of Percy Hope, following his exploits two years earlier in Hope City. Percy, now a journalist for William Randolph Hearst’s San Francisco Examiner, is sent on assignment to Nome to report on the next great stampede.
Along the way, Percy encounters and befriends the legendary gunman Wyatt Earp and his spirited wife, Josephine, as well as an assemblage of amusing, disarming, and sinister characters, including a sea monster known as the Qalupalik.
Cape Nome is a riveting story of betrayal, murder, kidnapping, and government conspiracies, all of which form the backdrop for Percy Hope’s struggle to uncover the truth in a world poisoned by greed, deceit, and lies.
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otzi's odyssey
The Troubled Soul of a Neolithic Iceman
Ötzi’s Odyssey – The Troubled Soul of a Neolithic Iceman, opens in the year 1991 with the remarkable sighting of a mummified man, half frozen in glacial ice, whom two hikers stumble upon. Along with this profound archeological discovery, the soul of this five-thousand-year-old iceman is awakened.
Ötzi the iceman’s adventure takes him to the modern era, where his observant soul tries to comprehend why it remains tethered to the frozen mummy, as well as to make sense of a technologically advanced world. The story then returns to 3300 BCE, to the life and times of clan chief Bhark as he lives with his family in a peaceful village upon stilt homes clinging to the shore of the great Lake Neith, located in the shadows of ominous Similaun Mountain.
Bhark and his family are ambushed by his rival Shadrach, who insists that he, not Bhark, is the clan’s rightful heir. A subsequent encounter with the soul hunter Creyak, who promises to return to Bhark all that was lost, sends our hero on a perilous journey into the four demonic realms of Gehenna. Along the way, he receives wisdom from Miko the Seer and guidance from his clairvoyant daughter, Amica, both of whom have the power to pierce the veil that separates the upper and lower spiritual realms, while Bhark fights for the salvation—and ultimate redemption—of his eternal soul.
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thunder falls
The Education of Leopold Red Wolf
Thunder Falls chronicles the transformation of Leopold Wolf from a naive young man into an outspoken advocate for Native American rights during the late 1800s.
Leo and his father, Isaac, work for the Carlisle Indian School, an institution governed by the motto “kill the Indian, save the man” and notorious for its harshness, Leo witnesses the abuse, neglect, and victimization of children under the institution’s care and resolves to help them gain the respect their culture deserves.
Leo’s quest takes him to Lakota territory, where elder and holy man Black Elk has a vision of Leo recovering the tribe’s Sacred Pipe, stolen years ago. Leo’s journey into—and under—the Black Hills reveals extraordinary phenomena about the Lakota and about himself. In the caverns of the Black Hills, Leo encounters the red wolf, Thunder Falls, and the Soul Tree, all of which guide him toward his destiny. While pursuing the eternal love of Sarah Cameron—niece of a senator notorious for his enmity against the Lakota—and fighting for Native American rights, Leo crosses the country with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show and ultimately risks his life for the people he has come to care for.
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denali
The Alaskan Adventures of Percy Hope
Book Three
The final book of Neil Perry Gordon’s Goldfield Trilogy begins in the autumn of 1901, when Percy Hope ventures off to New York City’s Lower East Side in search of his six-month-old son, Walter, and Walter’s mother, the fugitive Peggy Greenburg.
Along the way, Percy stumbles upon an intriguing journal left behind by the late Magnus Vega, who tragically drowned a year earlier in the Bering Sea. Magnus’s detailed account chronicles his voyage into Alaska’s unforgiving winter wilderness and includes a cryptic map that sends Percy and his best friend, Liam, on a whirlwind quest to track down a lost fortune of gold, outmaneuver notorious gangsters, and uncover the metaphysical mystery behind what happened to Magnus within the glorious ice caverns under North America’s tallest mountain peak, Denali.
Denali is the conclusion of the Alaskan adventures of Percy Hope and the colorful cast of characters he encounters. Throughout this trilogy, he abides by the timeless advice of his mentor and fellow author Jack London, who once proclaimed, “You can’t wait for inspiration, Percy. You must go after it with a club.”
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BETWEEN TWO GATES
A Young Man's Quest Toward Birth
The story unfolds with the tragic demise of Samuel, a young thirty-two man whose life is cut short by a fentanyl-tainted Percocet. From the moment of his passing, his soul embarks on an extraordinary journey, driven by a deep desire to understand the cause behind his tragic end.
Structured in three captivating acts, the first act introduces Samuel as he is greeted by his guiding grandfather in the soul world. Together, they embark on a profound exploration of Samuel's past life, delving into moments of joy and the challenging circumstances that ultimately led to his devastating downfall.
In act two, Samuel's soul family enlists his help to rescue his great-great-grandfather, taken by the soulless creature known as the rasha. Samuel's quest sends him through the treacherous five realms of Gehenna, where he confronts his past misdeeds and undergoes a transformative purification of his soul.
The final act witnesses Samuel's awe-inspiring visits to the seven planetary spheres, where he encounters captivating divine beings. Angels, archangels, and fairies bestow profound insights upon Samuel, unraveling the secrets of the universe and allowing him to reconcile his karmic footprint. Through this enlightening adventure, Samuel gains clarity about his significant life's purpose.
Between Two Gates offers an enchanting exploration of the soul world as Samuel unravels the mysteries of existence and embarks on a transformative spiritual odyssey from death to birth. Readers will reflect upon the intricate tapestry of Samuel's soul life, the redemptive power of karma, and the profound potential for a new life filled with family, friends, and love.
AVAILABLE IN: EBOOK, PAPERBACK & AUDIBLE
