A moving and riveting epic novel--a family saga, spanning three generations and dealing with their dark and mysterious past, set in an Ethiopian, magical mountainous countryside, in a world of monkeys, goats and spirits.Desta, a seven-year-old boy and Abraham, his middle-aged father, are on separate but parallel missions. The boy dreams of climbing one of the mountains that circle his home to touch the sky and run his fingers through the clouds. Abraham yearns to find his own long lost father. Each faces a series of obstacles and each ultimately realizes his dream, although not in the way he hoped.In the center of this sweeping novel is a 2,800-year old Solomonic gold coin, a family heirloom that went missing along with Desta's vanished grandfather forty years earlier. A symbol of the family's financial success and personal pride, this coin is one of the reasons why Abraham grew up fatherless and why his mother abandoned her farmland estate and came to settle in an isolated, mountainous valley, setting the family saga in motion

In the second act of this unfolding epic, the shepherd boy Desta is catapulted from his remote and isolated valley into a wider world. He pursues his dream of a modern education and vows to fulfill the destiny of his family by reuniting the twin Coins of Magic and Fortune.To accomplish this parallel quest, Desta must hold firm to his own moral compass, following a path laden with mysterious notes, spectral voices, the Cloud Man's counsel, and the seductive urgings of the ethereal Eleni. Driven ever farther from his origins by his dreams, Desta must confront the meaning of family and physical privation. He must use his own powerful gifts if he is to see his deepest aspirations take flight.Conjuring the sun-splashed land and a rich cultural pageantry that readers have come to love, Desta and The Winds of Washaa Umera is one boy's endearing journey of discovery, and a wise parable on the power of faith and aspiration.

A moving and riveting epic novel--a family saga, spanning three generations and dealing with their dark and mysterious past, set in an Ethiopian, magical mountainous countryside, in a world of monkeys, goats and spirits.Desta, a seven-year-old boy and Abraham, his middle-aged father, are on separate but parallel missions. The boy dreams of climbing one of the mountains that circle his home to touch the sky and run his fingers through the clouds. Abraham yearns to find his own long lost father. Each faces a series of obstacles and each ultimately realizes his dream, although not in the way he hoped.In the center of this sweeping novel is a 2,800-year old Solomonic gold coin, a family heirloom that went missing along with Desta's vanished grandfather forty years earlier. A symbol of the family's financial success and personal pride, this coin is one of the reasons why Abraham grew up fatherless and why his mother abandoned her farmland estate and came to settle in an isolated, mountainous valley, setting the family saga in motion

In the second act of this unfolding epic, the shepherd boy Desta is catapulted from his remote and isolated valley into a wider world. He pursues his dream of a modern education and vows to fulfill the destiny of his family by reuniting the twin Coins of Magic and Fortune.To accomplish this parallel quest, Desta must hold firm to his own moral compass, following a path laden with mysterious notes, spectral voices, the Cloud Man's counsel, and the seductive urgings of the ethereal Eleni. Driven ever farther from his origins by his dreams, Desta must confront the meaning of family and physical privation. He must use his own powerful gifts if he is to see his deepest aspirations take flight.Conjuring the sun-splashed land and a rich cultural pageantry that readers have come to love, Desta and The Winds of Washaa Umera is one boy's endearing journey of discovery, and a wise parable on the power of faith and aspiration.