PENCIL SKETCHES

of CHARACTERS and PLACES in

CAST YOUR OWN SHADOW

Danché as four-year-old, winter storm, 1917.

Front of Danché's home in Philonika, Macedonia Greece.

Old and faded sketch of Dedo Petro, soldier for Greece, circa 1890. This is the rifle 16-year-old Danché takes with him in 1930 on hunt for rogue policeman Kararlambros.  

Sosia as an infant, Vouellenika, Macedonia Greece, 1922.

Five-year-old Sosi in Vouelenika, Macedonia Greece, 1927.

Danché's hometown, Philonika, Macedonia Greece, 1930.

Sosia's hometown Vouellenika, 1930.

Karalambros. Danché kills this rogue policeman to avenge the brutal attack on his mother. Afterward, Danché must flee Greece to escape retribution.

The Harbor at Thessaloniki. The pictures show the comercial harbor, the people's promenade,  and the famous White Tower. Danché flees here and tries to secure a job aboard a ship bound for America. Traveling without credentials or proper identification, the felon guarantees only that he is in for rough sailing.

After months of servitude aboard an illegal ship, Danché reaches cosmopolitan Barcelona and escapes his captors.  When he falters while ineptly posing as a respectable traveler in an elegant hotel, Danché takes refuge with a highly regarded prostitute named Amarantha.

Fascination with Amarantha nearly causes Danché to abandon his quest to go to America and confront his father, but she convinces him otherwise. After an adventuresome journey through civil war Spain and a French countryside wary of interlopers, he finally reaches Ireland where he boards another illegal ship of questionable seaworthiness and travels to Newfoundland, Canada.

After a difficult journey through Canada to the U.S., Danché's search for his father leads to Iowa before he backtracks to Toledo, Ohio where his father is most unwelcoming. Alas, the wayward son discovers that life on the street as an illegal allien is unbearable, and he reluctantly joins his father until he can find the means to be independent. Here, father and son pose pretentiously.

While Danchè struggles unhappily with a father who treats him as undeserving of love and respect, Sosia grows up in a loving family with unbounded acceptance and encouragement. As she matures, her father's tender and warm stories of the "miracle of her birth" bear a mysteriousness that causes her to wonder, particularly when she learns about refugee Greek children and Ottoman atrocities and genocide that occur around the time of her birth.