The Ghost of Mt. Soledad: A Love Story

The story takes place in the summer of 2007 amidst San Diego's record-breaking heat wave, and its even steamier, real-life-debate over the constitutionality of the cross on Mount Soledad. MARGARET DURAN, a forty-five-year-old, never married freelance writer accepts an assignment to write an 'Op-Ed' piece about the controversial cross for a local magazine called, "Single in San Diego." While doing her research, Margaret visits the mountaintop and is confronted by--and inexplicably drawn to--the ghost of a handsome young American soldier from WWII. He claims his name is LUCAS JOHN CAMERON, and that he and Margaret had been lovers in a past life during the 1940's. He insists that they died in each others' arms, inside the Rock of Gibraltar, during air attacks by the Italian army and the Vichy French. At first, Margaret doesn't believe him, but then he tells her things about her past life that explain a lot about her present-day life. For instance, Margaret always wondered why the Spanish language always came so easily to her ]] until the ghost talks about her former life growing up in the south of Spain before moving with her family to the British territory of Gibraltar ]]where she eventually became a nurse. When Margaret questions him about the current-day "Mt. Soledad Cross Controversy," the ghost simply tells her that "God really doesn't mind the separation of church and state. It's the separation of people that breaks His heart." Margaret must choose between the sane and satisfying life she has established for herself in reality, and the very convincing story of a ghost who just might be her forever soul-mate