Finding Love In Constantinople: Book One of A Trilogy

Finding Love In Constantinople is a historical fiction inspired by the rich history of the Ottoman Empire that ruled a third of the world for centuries. The depiction of the events was accurate, but the characters who moved the story during the period were products of the author's imagination. It began with the kidnapping of a shepherd boy, Andreas along with many others his age from the Greek island of Syros by soldiers. They were enslaved in Topkapi Palace in Constantinople. He grew up to become learned and rose to Sultan Sulayman's finest, favorite craftsman. Falling in love with the Sultan's lady in the Harem gave him serious problems. Now named, Mustafa, he was ordered into a marriage of convenience with an older woman from the Harem who served for 13 years. It was not enough to separate him from his first love. The romance continued.
Mustafa was sent to fight in another expansionist battle and died leaving two boys with his wife, Sophia and with his first love, Esme; the Sultan's fourth wife. Everyone believed it was the Sultan's. Tragedy, exodus and more deaths followed inside the Palace walls while everyone waited for the approaching soldiers from the combined troops from then Republic of Venice and Pope Pius II from Rome.
Danger awaited the escape of the two boys; one in the arms of his mother escaping from the northwestern route to Florence; and the other on the back of Mustafa's friend Omar sailing from the south shore of Izmir through the Mediterranean Sea to Greece.