The Sirena Quest
The New York Times Sunday Magazine piece famously opened: “She has pouting lips and high round breasts. Thousands of men have dreamt of her. Hundreds have chased after her. Two have died in pursuit. Her name is Sirena, she weighs 193 pounds, and she vanished in 1959. Without a trace.”
Barrett College’s legendary Greco-Roman sculpture’s fate was still a hot topic in 1970 when four roommates began their freshman year at the New England school. They’ve gone their separate ways for years. But as the 1994 commencement approaches, they are about to reunite to meet a challenge thrown down by a Class of ’59 hedge-fund billionaire. He has pledged a $25 million endowment plus a $3 million purse to her finder(s) if Sirena is restored to Barrett by June 17th, the date of his 35th reunion, the college’s sesquicentennial celebration—and our foursome’s 20th class reunion.
Although they are not alone in their pursuit—groups of alumni, including a pair of aggressive and highly-financed classmates, are running down leads across the world—St. Louis lawyer Lou Solomon and his crew come upon an obscure but intriguing clue. It leads them to Chicago where a young lawyer called Rachel Gold may hold key information. As the men race to crack the Sirena puzzle, their quest will transform their lives in unexpected ways.
"This heartwarming misadventure isn't so much about four middle-aged men finding a statue as about finding themselves." (Publisher's Weekly)
About Michael A. Kahn (St. Louis, Missouri Author)
Michael Kahn is a trial lawyer by day and an award-winning author at night. He wrote his first novel, Grave Designs, on a challenge from his wife Margi, who got tired of listening to the same answer whenever she asked him about a book he was reading. "Not bad," he would say, "but I could write a better book than that." "Then write one, honey," she finally said, "or please shut up." So he shut up for a long time, and then he wrote one.
A former elementary school teacher, Mike is the author of The Dead Hand and 9 other Rachel Gold novels; a legal thriller, The Mourning Sexton, under the pen name Michael Baron; and The Sirena Quest (2015), a stand-alone novel that he describes, in Hollywood jargon, as "a Baby Boomer version of 'The Big Chill' meets 'The Maltese Falcon.'" His latest novel, Played!, features, as Booklist wrote, "the same sharp dialogue, wit, and clever plotting his fans have come to expect." He is also the author of numerous short stories, including the three collected in A Handful of Gold.
In addition to his day job as a lawyer, he is an adjunct professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis, where he teaches a class on censorship and free expression. Married to his high school sweetheart, he is the father of five and the grandfather of, so far, five.
