Henry Towers

Like other books of the Henry Tower Series based on historically true events, "Rosa, a Survivor" blends reading pleasure with glimpses on what people experience when confronted with horrors of terrorism.

An ethnology professor at Algiers University, Rosa was specialized in the Saharan pre-historic rock paintings. As a kid, she loved her mom, Mary Blanchard, a destitute American expat living in a North African immigrant neighborhood of Paris. Tarik, her Berber biological father studying ethnology at the Sorbonne, was working in the same hotel. In October 1961, just a few days before baby Rosa's birth, Tarik had joined a political march for Algeria's independence brutally stopped by the French police. Hundreds of protesters were killed. But did Tarik really die ?

Rosa found herself culturally split. Obsessively looking for a father figure, she excelled in science and developed a passion for the Berber culture. During her last January 2013 expedition to the Tassili N'jjer National Park in the Sahara, she and her three associates fell victims of Islamist terrorists during the In Amenas natural gas extraction attack.
Severely traumatized, she acquired PTSD. By sheer luck, during the ensuing chaos at the plant, she was taken to the US embassy in Algiers. During her debriefing, US intelligence officers found that she was an American citizen from her mother. She was taken for PTSD treatment at the San Diego's Naval Hospital.

In a wild attempt to stop her suffering, she runs away to Todos Santos, in Baja California. There, she re-discovers the Eagle Rock group's song "Hotel California". That song had soothed her traumatized soul, while at In Amenas clinic during the terrorist siege. Now in Todos Santos, she strives to understand, love and be loved by the local people and their mysticism-based culture. She discovers the pleasures of a genuine family life that she never experienced before. She meets Carlos, a Baja Native American, self-taught, and passionate about his decimated ancestors' prehistoric culture. United in their passion for science, Rosa and Carlos discovers the true love that reshapes their lives forever.

With the tender support of new her friends, Rosa is cured of her PTSD nightmares under treatments by the local curandero shaman.