Even as a school boy the Iliad, Homer?s story of the Trojan War, intrigued me: was Helen of Troy a real person, and had she actually looked down from the top of Troy?s walls and watched the war that would decide her fate as it raged below her? I had to know: and so my wife and I set out for Turkey. Exactly how we wound up in Fethiye afterward I no longer recall: but we were to stay there for the next sixteen years.Fethiye is a pretty little seaport and tourist destination on the Mediterranean. Each summer its population swells as Germans, Dutch, and many many English set out on their yearly pilgrimage in search of sun, sea, and sometimes sex. This novel is really a love story: of the love between its heroine, Connie, an unhappily married English school teacher, and Omer, a former diving instructor who had almost died from the case of the bends after he had exhausted his air supply and was forced to resurface too quickly. From the moment he casts his eyes upon her in Bea?s Bar, a favorite haunt for English expatriates, she knows she is destined to become his. But in the end, what is it that dooms their love? Was it the religious and cultural differences dividing East from West? After reading the novel, you decide.