"The Golden Chest" by William Luer
Tea was the drink of China for thousands of years. But in the 1500's Buddha said "No, tea must be shared with the world." And so by a life passing through five men of history, tea became the second most popular drink of the world. This novel tells the story of that journey.
AUTHOR BIO
I am a recently retired Pathologist and “Tea Assam” is my first novel. I first wrote a screen play for what I envisioned as a full length adventure film, but found that movie producers, in general, are not interested in unsolicited material. Therefore, I wrote a novel from my screen play and published it on Kindle Direct Publishing. I have been growing and making tea on a small scale in an urban setting for more than twenty years and in that process I have become very interested in how tea has shaped world history. This book is an effort to tell a small part of that history. I live in New Orleans, Louisiana with my wife Melissa and we have three grown children and six grandchildren. New Orleans is situated at a perfect latitude for the cultivation of tea, as well as a perfect place to enjoy food and drink, for which I have great passion. Others in the United States are also finding joy in the growing of tea and the US League of Tea Growers, of which I am one of the founding members, has been formed to promote tea agriculture. During the years 2022 and 2023 I wrote a screen play envisioning a television miniseries using tea history from which I have written a novel entitled “The Golden Chest.”. In 2023 I became aware of Artificial Intelligence (AI) art and have used that tool to illustrate “The Golden Chest.” I returned to “Tea Assam” and used AI to illustrate that novel. That revised edition is now available on Amazon. In 2024 I published a non-fiction book on my personal experiences as an urban tea farmer.
EDITORIAL REVIEW
A Xanadu Editorial Review: “The Golden Chest: A Journey of Love and Tea”
Author: William Luer
In The Golden Chest, William Luer does not simply weave a story; he breathes life into tea itself, rendering it as central as the sea and stars to his cast of characters. Tea, that “second most popular drink of the world,” a quotidian fixture upon our tables, springs here into a sprawling, delicate chain—linking continents, epochs, souls. What Luer presents is a tapestry: at once vast in its exploration of empire, yet tinged with an intimacy that belies the ages and oceans that separate each chapter. From Portugal’s rocky shores, we embark, gliding through the hallowed cloisters of the Dominican Order, and into the mind of Father Gaspar da Cruz—a missionary whose curiosity could never be contained by monastic walls.
Father Gaspar, conflicted yet dutiful, steps into history with trepidation, soon to be swept along by the forces of commerce and devotion that carry him through distant lands. His journey is not just a geographic one, but a collision of worldviews, where faith intertwines with the inevitable seduction of discovery. Gaspar’s encounter with Anna Maria—a delicate, burgeoning connection—is fraught with a restrained passion that Luer paints as part noble, part naive. We sense in him a man caught between the desires of the spirit and those of the heart, a struggle as timeless as the lure of tea itself. Their dialogues, it must be admitted, sometimes stumble in their earnestness, appearing as echoes rather than whispers of real intimacy, but it is in these imperfections that their humanity breathes.
As the novel unfolds, figures such as Sir Thomas Lipton appear, symbols of tea’s ascension from personal indulgence to global commodity. Yet beneath Luer’s dense, lovingly researched prose lies a suggestion of something stranger—a whisper of reincarnation, a soft, strange current pulling across the centuries, suggesting that history’s characters are merely shadows of their antecedents, reappearing with the rustle of leaves and the ring of cups.
The journey is not merely historic, not merely spiritual, but of substance, of steeped and ambered tea itself. Tea, with its presence felt in every chapter, grows into a character of its own—binding, beckoning, reminding us that even the simplest pleasures are anchored in the unseen depths of time. And by the end, The Golden Chest emerges like a rich blend, a mingling of the factual with the imagined, a final sip that leaves us with a lingering taste of longing and wonder.
"The Golden Chest” by William Luer receives four stars from Xanadu Book Awards
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