Arizona is famous — or infamous — for its monster dust storms. Well, and its numerous copper mines. Even now, Arizona is home of twenty-seven of the largest copper mines in the world.

Meet Lazarus, the Samaritan, copper miner extraordinaire in one of the dryest, hottest,  and blowingest deserts in sometimes Arabia and sometimes Israel. He could have as easily lived out the same life in Arizona.

The storyline is that he is born on an Arabian horse ranch in Samaria and grows up to be a road worker for the Romans. That does not last long. He falls in love with a Jewess (uh-oh — a mixed marriage) and pledges to work for her bride price in her father’s copper mine in the desert just above the Red Sea.  As a slave, he is mistreated in all kinds of creative ways.  There is a mine collapse, covered in several suspense-filled chapters, but, of course, he survives. 

That’s where the first dust storm comes in.  He is caught out in one of those things, hides behind his trusty Arabian horse, and after the storm, takes a walk.  Ah, ha!  The dust storm has uncovered a rich vein of copper right on the surface. He spends many chapters trying to raise money to buy it but does with the aide of a questionable partner.  Zarus (they call him that — easier and quicker to say) creates an open-pit copper mine and all the things that can go wrong with such mines do.

That is all of the plot the author is willing to reveal without you buying her book. One reviewer put it this way:  

“I would give this novel six stars if that was an option. This is quite a unique book. …story twists and turns in ways you don’t expect. …isn’t simply historical fiction — it has romance and action blended in with the history. …an amazing writer and scholar.”

The author is local novelist, Katheryn Maddox Haddad, of Casa Grande.  She researches an average of three hundred hours to prepare for each of her novels. To prepare for this  book, well, let’s look at the list:

• Interviewed Max Compton, copper-mine worker for ten years.
• Charlie Stephenson, copper-mine worker for twenty years.
• Ray Stephenson, copper-mine worker for forty years.
• Toured a reproduced old-fashioned mine at Goldfield ghost town in Apache Junction to get the feel and smell of it.
• Read the book “33” by Jonathan Franklin who interviewed the 33 Chilean miners trapped in an underground copper mine for sixty-nine days.
• Discovered through DNA results that Samaritans still exist, and communicated with some of them.
• Examined Valley Fever (the flesh-eating kind).
• Learned how to dive for pearls (Zarus’ son got into that)

One last little tidbit is that, although this is not a highly religious book, Lazarus lives through all of Jesus’ parables including being the “Good Samaritan” and his sister being the Samaritan “Woman at the Well”.

This 450-page book is for sale locally at Barnes and Noble. It is also in stock at Goodruby Christian Bookstore, 973 E. Cottonwood Lane, Casa Grande, 520-426-7999, which has a whole line of gutsy novels for men. For ebook readers, it is available on Kindle for 99 cents.  Any bookstore can order a copy for customers under ISBN 978-1-948462-20-4.