How does a monk raised in a monastery deal with naked women and the atrocities of war? In 1566, Spain expands its dominion over the newly discovered territories not yet widely known as America. The many native nations of this new land pose no threat to Spain's superiority, despite the ferocity of their resistance. Conquistadors rule – natives are slaughtered and enslaved. Only the Church denounces the horror. The missionaries are the natives' only hope. Friar Salvador Cepeda is a determined, devout and virgin Franciscan monk. He is sent across the ocean to join a historical conquest expedition to the lands of the recalcitrant Carib Indians of the valley of Caracas in the Province of Venezuela, and the cruelty, lust and avarice of the Conquest shake his faith to its foundations. When beautiful native Apacuana enters his life and takes him into the stronghold of the most feared chief, Guacaipuro, Salvador discovers a native society he never imagined, a God he never knew and a passion he cannot condemn. Torn between what he has always believed and his new insight of life Salvador must find a new way to confirm his faith or else become an apostate.

Luisa Maria Celis was born in Caracas, Venezuela. She lived in Germany and emigrated from Venezuela to Canada eight years ago where she studied English, Art and History courses at BCOU. Property Manager by profession and autodidact in most things, she started writing some fifteen years ago and has produced a self-published romance Dos Zafiros y un Rubi (2001), in Spanish, and poems, children's stories in both English and Spanish. Arrows is the first of a series of three historical novels that tell the story of an epoch that saw the birth of the Caribbean.

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I am astonished by Arrows. It is a quintessential novel for all the Americas – north, central and south – from the top of Canada to the bottom of Chile.

Alan Twigg