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Ari is assigned to cover the story for The Pennsylvania Tribune and becomes involved with an elite FBI squad assigned to find the killers. It is led by the very handsome – and very Catholic – Supervisory Special Agent Jesse Sandoval. In an effort to dredge up some clues about local occult practices she offers to write a series for the online newspaper about the area’s metaphysical industry and begins to research local Reiki shops, botanicas, crystal dealers, psychics and channelers. For the first time, she confronts the facts about these practices which she has been personally involved in for many years and realizes just how thin is the evidence for their efficacy. At the same time, Ari becomes friends with Father Luke, the pastor of St. Peter Damian’s who was once a “N.O.N.E.” like herself who sought truth in all kinds of esoteric practices until finally finding it in the Church where he eventually became a priest.

By Book Two, Ari is beginning to experience serious doubts about her belief system, misgivings that are only enhanced by her undeniable attraction to Jesse Sandoval. They are strangely irresistible to one another even though his strong Catholic faith and her New Age beliefs make them want to resist what is obviously happening between them. They begin to fall in love, in spite of themselves, and this impels her to embark on a serious pursuit of not only the truth, but the love she never experienced from either her parents or her former lover.

The most brutal of the hate crimes takes place in Book Three and the search for the killers intensifies along with Ari’s personal quest for healing and a new identity. By now, Ari’s grandmother, the renowned genealogist Jacqui Dalton, has begun to introduce Ari to the research she has been doing on her ancestry. In each book of the series, the reader is introduced to an historical Ariella, beginning with the most recent and working backward in time. Even though Jacqui is narrating these stories to Ari, the reader will experience them in real time in order to make the history come alive. 

These ancestors all have the same traits in common – they’re all named Ariella (which means “Lioness of God”), were all staunch defenders of Catholicism, and all suffered from the same serious illness that plagues Ari’s life – diabetes. These women lived and loved during the most troubling times of Church history which affords the reader a glimpse into the social justice movement of the Gilded Age, the 16^th century horrors of Elizabethan persecution, the scandal-ridden church of the 11^th century, the Carolingian reforms of the age of Charlemagne, and the brutality of the Diocletian persecution that finally led to the election of Emperor Constantine.

Meanwhile, the FBI draws closer to the perpetrators of the hate crimes in Book Four and Five, so close that both Jesse and Ari will barely escape with their lives. A dramatic rescue from a tense hostage situation will leave the perpetrators in jail and Ari and Jesse ready to commit to the love they can no longer ignore.

In the sixth and final novel, the series’ various plots come to a conclusion. Ari is thoroughly converted. Her heart is on fire for the God – and the man – who loved her back to life. Her inner wounds heal, her relationship with her parents is restored, the criminals who nearly killed them are indicted, and she and Jesse become husband and wife.

In the same book, Jacqui’s research unfolds as she outlines the evidence that may link her granddaughter to a biblical figure who may have been the original Ariella. Jacqui reveals certain clues found in ancient Roman records of a “miracle girl” from Capernaum named Ariella that provide convincing evidence that her granddaughter may indeed be linked to one of Jesus’ most spectacular miracles.

Relying on my background in historical fiction, eleven Church-approved books on Catholic mysticism and theology, and twenty years of experience as a researcher of New Age and occult practices, The Chronicles of Ariella is a gripping saga of murder, romance, and redemption that spans six novels and 2000 years of history.