Blog Archives
A Motif of Connection
Passages follows a man from his childhood in Greece through the challenges of his family’s history to his career as a physician caring for veterans. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
The factual history of a naval combat vessel active in the Vietnam conflict provided a motif of connection between principal characters, neatly laying down a plot line that would intertwine their rites of passage. The aging naval combat veteran and the young psychiatrist encounter one another under duress at parallel crossroads in their lives as their therapeutic relationship unfolds.
Can you share with us a little about the research that went into shaping your storyline?
My own training in medicine and the military provided a firm floor for a realistic representation of the formative milieu of the two protagonists. Structured interviews with sailors who were in the fight provided supportive resources on events, equipment, and tactics, and helped sharpen the context of combat events as well as the personal aftermath on the return to civilian life. Drawing on contemporaneous events in the news of Tulsa, Oklahoma served up a scenario for the make-or-break challenge that sets the story line in motion.
What was one scene in the novel that you felt captured the morals and message you were trying to deliver to readers?
Of many scenes that make a statement of conviction, an epiphany for many readers will arise from AJ’s description of the ramifications that the hyperfocus of battle can have on a young man much later in life.
What is the next book you are working on, and when will it be available?
The likely next release involves four women growing up together on Staten Island and lessons of empathy learned through their deep bonds. Look again in 6-12 months for Four Corners!
Author Links: GoodReads | Facebook
Miko, the precocious son of a Greek fisherman, has weathered an indecisive path to adulthood in medicine and psychiatry. . . or has he? Dormant in his soul is a muse for writing and a smoldering guilt of abandoning his father. His training trajectory finds him in Tulsa, USA, of all places, where a 2 a.m. hospital admission, the aging, drunk, and potentially violent Vietnam veteran AJ becomes the young physician’s patient. A metaphysical quirk awaits them.
Unwitting confidants in the quest to understand what each is missing, the two trade insights best borne from meeting the other where he is. AJ is a prisoner of the exhilarating echoes of a confusing war; Miko suppresses his own psychological turmoil while exposing that of others.
A chance meeting of their wives leads to a bond kept hidden under norms of confidentiality. Each woman finds something of themselves in the other and the moxie to withstand battles in their own marriages, on their own terms.
Why AJ was brought to the hospital by the police that night pits a sense of duty against self-destruction. Why was there but a single round in his Luger that night?
In Passages, the author takes aim at our enigmatic humanity. Each of us is the hero in his or her own life, a contrast of magnificence and flaws, navigating the complexity of principles and barriers as best one can.
At once philosophical and deeply human, Passages explores identity, trauma, loyalty, and the invisible threads that tether us to the people we least expect. With poignancy and grit, it reminds us that healing often comes not from having the answers, but from simply being seen.
Passages – A Voyage from War to Peace
Passages follows the life of Miko Papagiannis from his childhood in Greece to his adult years as a physician in the United States. The story opens with a vivid scene on the Aegean where young Miko watches a decommissioned naval ship being destroyed during a training exercise. The grim beauty of the sinking sparks questions about memory, violence, and the unseen weight carried by those shaped by war. From there, the novel moves through Miko’s family history, his father’s struggles as a fisherman, his grandfather’s unspoken wartime scars, and finally Miko’s own encounters with veterans in his medical training. By the time he meets AJ, a troubled veteran who enters his care, the threads of war’s lingering shadow across generations begin to weave into something larger.
This book pulled me in fast. The writing is plainspoken yet emotional in a way that sneaks up on you. Scenes rise and fall with a natural rhythm, and sometimes the simplest moments hit the hardest. Watching the ship sink through a child’s eyes made me feel a pinch in my chest. Later, hearing AJ wrestle with shame and loneliness felt even heavier because the earlier chapters had already planted the idea that war wounds rarely stay in the past. The prose can be earnest, but it never drifts into preachy territory. It just sits with the characters while they struggle to make sense of their own stories, and I found myself rooting for them almost without noticing.
My favorite parts were the conversations that seem small on the surface but crack open whole emotional worlds underneath. Miko talking with his mother about his grandfather lingered with me. It felt honest, almost raw, like things families say only after years of holding back. The book also surprised me with how gently it handled the mentoring relationship between Miko and AJ. Those scenes could have turned clinical or stiff, yet instead they felt human and a little messy in the best way. I liked how the story let silence do some of the work. People don’t always confess their pain neatly, and the author understands that. I wished the pacing between chapters jumped less sharply, but the emotional payoff made the jolts worth it.
Passages felt like a novel written for people who have lived close to hardship, or who have watched someone they love carry invisible weight. It also feels right for readers who enjoy stories about healing that don’t look dramatic but instead unfold in quiet rooms, awkward talks, and brave little choices. If you like reflective fiction rooted in real human experience, this book would be a meaningful read.
Pages: 234 | ASIN : B0FBS569TS
LITERARY TITAN 