When Ben receives a secret message from the Chairman of the Senate about Royalist activities in his district, he can hardly believe it. The Republic has been established for over fifty years. The return of a king is the stuff of folklore and a worn out religion that no one can believe in anymore. Yet on the eve of his election, his suspicions draw him out into the woods where a curious fire burns. What he finds there challenges everything he has believed not only about the Republic, but also about his own identity. The Traitor's Chair is a quick moving but thought-provoking young adult fantasy set in a world of animals and people in the tradition of C. S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia and George MacDonald's The Princess and Curdie. Ben and his companion, a small sheep named Thistle, find themselves enmeshed in a world of assassins and political intrigue as they head for the capital city where he will begin his duties as a senator. Reeling from revelations that have made him question himself, Ben struggles to find how he can best live sacrificially for the ones he loves in a world of divided loyalties.

What is it about a tempest of emotions that inspires us so completely or drives us to ridiculousness? Is it the rawness, the sense of a spirit on the edge of either evolving or spiraling towards extinction? Meeting in the Stew is just a sample of where someone might go if lost, what he might do to hang on to a sense of realism, or express a love which might consume him, or at least the love he's understood till now. The journey through all these places happens with being in and out of relationships, dealing with the past, taking on the present, and opening up to the impact on, and from, others. It's this journey, expressed through these words, that you're invited to step into as witness, comrade, friend, or lover; to peruse, connect with, immerse into, and enjoy.