The final two members on Matthew Stevens’s team are similar in many ways: they both joined about the same time, they both have a history in hunting ancient artifacts that may have some connection to the Bible, and their pasts are haunted with pain and regret. They also became real fast friends. In fact, when I first met them, I could swear they were a couple. Hey, they’re both pushing forty and have no significant others to speak of. It was an honest mistake. But they’re good sports. They could laugh at it.
Let’s break it down for you.
Thomas Demeut is a freelance archeologist who, prior to teaming up with Matthew, worked for one of the curator’s of Topkapi Palace in Turkey, where he was assigned to seek out holy relics. When he heard about Matthew’s search for Atlantis, he talked the curator into funding his research for three years, money that dried up rather quickly. Luckily, a new find in Florida helped earn additional funding, but it still wasn’t enough. And although Thomas loved working for Matthew and his team, he didn’t think the curator would finance any more without strong, hard evidence that the Lost City actually existed.
Kara Reisen was brought on board after her own reputation caught Matthew’s eye. Kara is an accomplished professor of anthropological linguistics at Brown University who also owns and operates a museum that showcases technology advancement throughout time. She is fluent in Aramaic and Latin, and has published several works, the most prominent being “The Lives of Human Technology”, a paper she first published in Scientific American, but which has since been translated into over a dozen languages across the globe. Before that, she spent her time at Brown as a sociolinguistics professor, where she earned a grant to uncover tablets in Babylon. It was in her study of translating ancient Egyptian tablets that caught Matthew’s attention. The two spent months translating text on tablets Kara found on one of her own expeditions.
But it’s not all rainbows and pixies with these two. Much like Lauren Mead, both have demons in their closets. Before getting his life together, Thomas was, or lack of a better word, a drunken asshole. Because of this, he not only lost the one girl he thought he loved, but lost custody of his daughter, Chelsea. That’s on top of growing up with an overprotective mother and a history of being bullied in school, which led to an incident during a camping trip that left him both physically and emotionally scarred. Kara’s past isn’t quite as dark, but is still quite heartbreaking. When she was finishing up college, Kara lost her sister when her plane went missing somewhere over the Atlantic. Her body was never recovered, and though Kara’s excited about the trip that will no doubt change everything, she’s also a little nervous about heading out to the water’s where her sister may still be buried. The memory of her may be too hard to bear, but with God at her side, she believes He will help her through it.
Learn more about Matthew Stevens
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Amen Dello Keli.
The Spirit Of… A Novel; Written by Bryan Caron
Chaos breeds Chaos 