A bohemian before I even knew what the word meant, I have lived my life with a passion to be free of conventional lifestyles and explore the world around me and within me. From my earliest days, on the farm in northern Ontario, Canada that was my first home, I found I had an eye and inner spirit to see the world as much more than what most people were comfortable with. Exploring my inner consciousness with meditation, lucid dreaming, mind-expanding drugs, alternative lifestyles and hitch-hiking several times across Canada brought me into contact with some unforgettable people and led to a variety of adventures in this vast and beautiful country. From the crashing waves of the Atlantic on the rugged east coast to the land beyond the Rockies in British Columbia and Vancouver Island, I let music and literature be my muse and constant companions as I lived and loved and dealt with great personal tragedy, pain and upheaval. It is this very personal vision of life and the strange paths I have taken that I plan to explore in my writing.

Alistair Forrest
Latest book: Goliath. Published on July 22, 2010. (5.00 from 2 reviews)
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• Libertas on Feb. 05, 2011
  
  It has been some 30 years since I last read a historical fiction book. Since recently my love of history has led me to a somewhat haphazard study of all things Roman, it was with great pleasure that I found myself taken back to the first century BC with the novel Libertas by Alistair Forrest. When I think of Melqart, the unlikely hero of Libertas, I smile as I recall Edward Bulwer-Lytton's classic adage "the pen is mightier than the sword", since it is primarily by his wits that Melqart, or Pito as he is known to his friends,survives in the turbulent and violent world his formerly peaceful homeland becomes when Gaius Julius Caesar leads his legions to war against the sons of Pompey the Great at the Battle of Munda (45 BC), in southern Spain, or Hispania as it was known then. For me, historical fiction like Libertas provides the same benefits of travelling, by allowing one the ability to become immersed in another culture and all it has to offer. Beyond that, one can travel back in time to when the world was a simpler place in some ways, but people, as always, were motivated by much the same things as today. Melqart's father is a baker and his mother skilled in the uses of herbs to strenghten and heal the body and the mind. I particularily enjoyed the vivid descriptions of the food enjoyed by the inhabitants of southern Spain, northern Africa (in a remarkable encounter with the Berbers) and Sicily. How I love the mediterranean diet! Libertas is a wonderfully spiritual book as well. Ever present are the polytheistic traditions of Europe at that time, but Pito learns that a much deeper understanding comes from the Kemeletoi, a celtic people who live in close harmony with nature. And as he travels to Rome to regain the freedom of his family, the Berbers of the north African desert teach Pito the tradition of a "covenant" between men, and he learns that "civilisation does not mean great temples and streets of stone". Forrest's love for his adopted homeland in Spain shines through in this remarkable story. And lest anyone think that eagles cooperating with people to help them hunt is a mystical flight of fantasy on the authors behalf, I refer you to the BBC Human Planet website...watch a clip from the Arctic episode, in the Altai Mountains in Mongolia as a Kazakh hunter and golden eagle team up to hunt a fox. Alistair Forrest does a wonderful job of painting a picture, with words, of life in Munda, a small town in southern Hispania under the yoke of Roman rule two thousand years ago. Once I had started this book, I found it hard to stop reading, which is always the hallmark of a naturally talented storyteller. I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys well-researched historical fiction. But above all, Libertas is a book about the remarkable ability of the human spirit to overcome tragedy and adversity, and emerge stronger because of it.