"Hadrian's Wall"

This was a fast-paced, well-written story that related one of the last clashes between the Celtic tribes and the Roman invaders of Britannia. It was set in 368 A.D. at the great wall that had been built to mark the end of the Roman empire. The main characters were:
     Valeria - a senator's daughter who was the pawn in an arranged marriage
     Arden Caratacus - her lover and a Celtic chieftain
     Galba Brassidias - a Machiavellian tribune whose ambition and cruelty was without limit

The author, William Dietrich, used an interesting device whereby the facts gradually become known in flashbacks as a Roman inspector tries to piece together what actually happened by interviewing various witnesses to the unfolding events.

Many years ago I began recording the title, author, and date of each book that I read. I put this into a Word table  so that I could sort it by each of those fields. I found this helpful to take with me to the library or bookstore when my short term memory got so bad that I couldn't remember whether or not I had already read something. Just a month ago, it occurred to me that I should start keeping a summary of the plot and my impressions of each book. I decided to do this in an art journal format in a composition notebook. The pages were first painted with a mixture of acrylic paints, and then I drew the wall with colored pencils and did the lettering with a .8 Copic Multiliner pen. The Celtic cross is a rubber stamp image. I had a lot of trouble getting this ready to post because it was too big for the scanner to read the whole spread. So I scanned the two halves separately and was struggling to learn enough about Photoshop to piece them together. A new online friend came to my rescue when she told me about the "stitching" capability in ArcSoft's PhotoStudio. Thanks, Janice! I didn't get it lined up absolutely perfectly, but it's close enough to suit me.