"Sometime in the future, in the skies over the Middle East, a pilot will watch the oil fires blaze on the desert miles below. Another war. Like the recent Desert Storm conflict, this war will pit the technological magic of the West against the primitive spell of this brutal, spiritual place - the cradle of civilization. Above, isolated amid the dials and readouts of his black, silent, super high-tech reconnaissance jet, that pilot, Dante Diamond, will look down from the edge of space and see an ancient land, a place that, for a few weeks one summer years before, he briefly called home." "Diamond's Compass is that pilot's story. In it, he recalls how, as a troubled cadet on summer vacation from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1978, he traveled to Iran during the last days of the Shah and found himself drawn into the great adventure of his life. It starts as a visit to the home of his parents - his mother, a military wife trying to cling to her own identity amid a wholly foreign culture, and his war-hero father, a remote, forbidding Air Force general assigned as a liaison to the Shah of Iran's staff. But soon they are all caught up in the intrigue and paranoia of a collapsing dictatorship." "For Diamond it is the beginning of an intense journey of self-discovery that leads him into the ferment of Tehran on the eve of revolution, into the hidden complexities of Persian culture and mythology, and finally on a perilous climb to the icy summit of the mountain that dominates Iranian lore, Mt. Damavand. He does not know that his guide on the climb may be an agent of the secret police - sent to leave him for dead in the ice and snow." "Years later, drawn back to the Middle East by a war where instant death is just over the horizon, he will find himself embarking upon that journey again and again in his recollections and imagination." "In Diamond's Compass, P.H. Liotta's first novel, a prizewinning writer and poet takes us on a breathtaking exploration of war and identity, of culture and myth, and the power of memory."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved