Hunt Henion writes for the Examiner and has been involved in deciphering the spiritual nature of life his entire life. He has a PhD in Religious Studies and is a best-selling author. He's written five books and compiled two anthologies (both Amazon Best-sellers)..
<p>Emerging from the long shadow cast by his formidable father, Harold Godwineson showed himself to be a worthy successor to the Earldom of Wessex. In the following twelve years, he became the King's most trusted advisor, practically taking the reins of government into his own hands. And on Edward the Confessor's death, Harold Godwineson mounted the throne—the first king of England not of royal blood. Yet Harold was only a man, and his rise in fortune was not blameless. Like any person aspiring to power, he made choices he wasn't particularly proud of. Unfortunately, those closest to him sometimes paid the price of his fame.<br /><br />This is a story of Godwine's family as told from the viewpoint of Harold and his younger brothers. Queen Editha, known for her Vita Ædwardi Regis, originally commissioned a work to memorialize the deeds of her family, but after the Conquest historians tell us she abandoned this project and concentrated on her husband, the less dangerous subject. In THE SONS OF GODWINE and FATAL RIVALRY, I am telling the story as it might have survived had she collected and passed on the memoirs of her tragic brothers.<br /><br />This book is part two of The Last Great Saxon Earls series. Book one, GODWINE KINGMAKER, depicted the rise and fall of the first Earl of Wessex who came to power under Canute and rose to preeminence at the beginning of Edward the Confessor's reign. Unfortunately, Godwine's misguided efforts to champion his eldest son Swegn recoiled on the whole family, contributing to their outlawry and Queen Editha's disgrace. Their exile only lasted one year and they returned victorious to London, though it was obvious that Harold's career was just beginning as his father's journey was coming to an end.<br /><br />Harold's siblings were all overshadowed by their famous brother; in their memoirs we see remarks tinged sometimes with admiration, sometimes with skepticism, and in Tostig's case, with jealousy. We see a Harold who is ambitious, self-assured, sometimes egocentric, imperfect, yet heroic. His own story is all about Harold, but his brothers see things a little differently. Throughout, their observations are purely subjective, and witnessing events through their eyes gives us an insider’s perspective.<br /><br />Harold was his mother's favorite, confident enough to rise above petty sibling rivalry but Tostig, next in line, was not so lucky. Harold would have been surprised by Tostig's vindictiveness, if he had ever given his brother a second thought. And that was the problem. Tostig's love/hate relationship with Harold would eventually destroy everything they worked for, leaving the country open to foreign conquest. This subplot comes to a crisis in book three of the series, FATAL RIVALRY.</p>
<p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><font size="3"><span style="font-family:'Times New Roman';"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>“…his character's evolving consciousness in sequential lifetimes suggests a karmic series of actions and consequences…compatible with the most robust cases evaluated by the Reincarnation Experiment.” (Paul Von Ward, author of <em>The Soul Genome: Science and Reincarnation</em>.)</span></font></p> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"></p><p><span style="font-family:'Times New Roman';"> </span></p> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">“You have not only given us a good and instructive narrative, but a collection of keen insights into the dynamics of reincarnation. All the best, Paul" 5/30/09<br /><br /></font></font></p> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span lang="en-gb" xml:lang="en-gb">Review of Hunt Henion, THE DON Q POINT OF VIEW, Eureka (Massachusetts): SHIFT AWARENESS BOOKS, 2008, 132 pp., 1SBN: 978-0-9822054-19, www.shiftAwareness.com </span></p><p></p> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span lang="en-gb" xml:lang="en-gb"></span></p><p> </p> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span lang="en-gb" xml:lang="en-gb">by Christopher Rollason, Ph.D, Metz, France – rollason@9online, <a href="http://www.geocities.com/christopherrollason">www.geocities.com/christopherrollason</a></span></p><p></p> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span lang="en-gb" xml:lang="en-gb"></span></p><p></p> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span lang="en-gb" xml:lang="en-gb"></span></p><p></p> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span lang="en-gb" xml:lang="en-gb"></span></p><p> </p> <p style="text-align:justify;margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><em><span lang="en-gb" xml:lang="en-gb">Don Quixote</span></em><span lang="en-gb" xml:lang="en-gb">, Miguel de Cervantes’ world-famous novel, has offered generations of entranced readers a world where the boundaries between imagination and reality are porous, ever-changing, and repeatedly crossed. In the ninth chapter of Part I, Cervantes himself claims the book is ‘really’ a translation from an author writing in Arabic, Cide Hamete Benengeli; in the third chapter of Part II, the Don and Sancho are told about a book that is none other than the first part of Cervantes’ novel featuring themselves. Readers have been similarly imaginative. In the American literary tradition, Washington Irving tells of a Spanish countryman who solemnly believes Sancho and the Don to be real people; in Mark Twain’s </span><em><span lang="en-gb" xml:lang="en-gb">Huckleberry Finn</span></em><span lang="en-gb" xml:lang="en-gb">, Tom Sawyer spins yarns of elephants and diamonds and tells a sceptical Huck: “if I wasn’t so ignorant, but had read a book called “Don Quixote”, I would know without asking”.</span></p><p></p> <p style="text-align:justify;margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span lang="en-gb" xml:lang="en-gb"></span></p><p> </p> <p style="text-align:justify;margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span lang="en-gb" xml:lang="en-gb">Now, more than four centuries on, Hunt Henion’s </span><em><span lang="en-gb" xml:lang="en-gb">The Don Q Point of View </span></em><span lang="en-gb" xml:lang="en-gb">comes as the latest in a long line of tributes. It might be thought difficult to say anything new about the Don, but in these pages we have a reliving of the Man of la Mancha’s life and hard times that is startling in its originality.</span></p><p></p> <p style="text-align:justify;margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span lang="en-gb" xml:lang="en-gb"></span></p><p> </p> <p style="text-align:justify;margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span lang="en-gb" xml:lang="en-gb">The book’s narrating “I” tells the reader that he who writes actually was, in a past life, a Don Quixote who in real truth existed. The reader who agrees to suspend disbelief, or to believe all the way, is rewarded with a remarkable journey. Hunt Henion retraces his steps as the Don, riding side by side with Sancho across the La Mancha plain: and tells how the book Miguel de Cervantes wrote combined fact with fiction, mixing true recollections of Don Quixote’s life with his own elaborations and inventions.</span></p><p></p> <p style="text-align:justify;margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span lang="en-gb" xml:lang="en-gb"></span></p><p> </p> <p style="text-align:justify;margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span lang="en-gb" xml:lang="en-gb">G.K. Chesterton saw Cervantes’ Don as no better than a “lean and foolish knight’”. Hunt Henion’s Quixote is at the antipodes of any such travesty. He is lean, but he is not foolish. He is one whose vision aspires beyond the surface of things and makes of the world a constant battlefield between good and evil. Despite defeats and disappointments, the paladin of the good never says die, and goes on believing till his last breath in “the impossible dream”. The Don whom Hunt Henion brings to life is the heroic Quixote, the one who on a dusty road frees the chained prisoners bound for the galleys, the one who declares “I am who I am” and refuses to be another. Our narrator relives a life in which he, as Don Quixote, challenged the rigidities and cruelties of Spain in the Inquisition era, never faltering in his vision of a kinder and juster world. In the epoch of Barack Obama, this re-created Quixote is one who stands up against the giants and enchanters of oppression, and shouts long and loud, for all the world to hear, “YES, WE CAN!”</span></p><p></p> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span lang="en-gb" xml:lang="en-gb"></span></p><p> </p> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><em>“ In addition to inspiring views, Henion shares stories behind the stories.<span> </span>… his style of pinpointing motivations and actions made for even more interesting reading.</em><span> </span>--Michelle A. Payton, Ph.D., Author of <em>“Birth Mix Patterns,</em>” “<em>Healing What’s Real</em>,” and<em>“Soul”utions.</em>”<span> <br /><br /></span></p> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:#000000;">Fascinating tale of the true Don Quixote</span></p><p></p> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:#000000;">Don Q is a remarkable memoir of a different sort. Based upon Hunt Henion’s personal memories and intuitive readings, he is able to share with us the wisdom of Don Quixote, also known as Cervante’s Man of La Mancha, because he was Quixote in a previous life.</span></p><p></p> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:#000000;">Henion brings us up to speed as to why Quixote was so obsessed with his dreams by showing how the soul learns and grows by successive incarnations. He illustrates this by writing about several previous lifetimes from 3000 BC in ancient </span><span style="color:#000000;">Canaan</span><span style="color:#000000;">, to being a student of Pythagoras and Socrates and Dante's grandfather. These lifetimes of pain and struggle, as well as learning of a myriad of subjects, set the stage for Quixote’s incarnation. Lessons not learned and karma all come into play as Henion gives voice to the real Don Q.</span></p><p></p> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:#000000;">The Don Q. Point of View is one of chivalry, seeing the beauty in all things, and begs us to question our own perceptions of reality. More than that, Henion explains and explores the concept of reincarnation in a very tangible, logical manner. This book is a great asset to anyone who enjoys the great classics, as well as spiritual seekers alike. </span></p><p></p> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span> </span>Laura Faieth – author of the rock roll reincarnation book: “I Found all My Pieces”</p> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"></p><p> </p> <p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;" class="MsoNormal"></p>