Mark Stephen Levy
Magical Kabul suddenly turns dangerous as four people find and lose love in the midst of the 1979 Soviet Union invasion of Afghanistan. OVERLAND is a 58000 word travel/adventure love story set in this remarkable and timeless part of the world.
Danny hopes to marry Heather after his final year of medical school at UCLA. Heather’s “Dear John” letter, however, changes his plans. Her inherent wanderlust pushes her to set off for London to ride the Magic Bus overland to Kathmandu in Nepal. Danny follows his heart to London and takes another Magic Bus in pursuit. Beyond all odds, Danny finds her along the way. But the first blush of shock and excitement of this most random encounter fades to argumentative conversations as their subliminal disparities explodes between the dissolving couple and spells the end of their doomed relationship. Danny now understands the reasoning behind Heather’s Dear John letter. After a dangerous ride through Iran, they arrive emotionally and physically exhausted and left to sort themselves out in Kabul, Afghanistan. It’s December 27th, two days after Christmas. Heather insists on one last celebration before they part ways, and suggests they buy each other Christmas presents. When entering the congested and panicked streets of Kabul, they are quickly separated just moments before the invasion. A bomb drops, and Heather along with the other Westerners are safely bused out of Afghanistan into Pakistan. Danny is left behind in Kabul.
Although shaken by being injured in a war zone, losing his girlfriend and unaware of her whereabouts, Danny manages to survive and thrive by employing his newly learned medical skills treating casualties of war in a local hospital. There he runs into Emily, a nurse from Northern Ireland he’d met eleven years earlier as a teen. With Heather gone, perhaps dead, Danny and Emily rekindle a love barely begun in their youth and agree to escape Kabul together. They are stranded for the winter in a tiny village in Afghanistan, unable to traverse a 12,000-foot mountain pass. Meanwhile, upon Heather’s escape, she meets James, a US State Department representative while in Islamabad, Pakistan. She seeks his help to find Danny, but falls in love with James, only for James to lie and cover up about Danny’s death. James has his own ulterior and evil motives. To everyone’s astonishment, their lives intersect six months later. The theme of the entire story is based on the proverb all’s fair in love and war.
Overland ends with a classic ending while leaving the door wide open for a sequel. Overland is also loosely based on my first travels abroad, including India, Nepal and Tibet.