Skeleton thoughts

I've scheduled two book readings in September and this morning I was thumbing through Murder in Paris trying to decide what to read.

When reading from a mystery it is always a challenge to select something that will entice readers to buy the book without spoiling the story.

Rather than make a selection, I couldn't stop looking at the cover. The skeleton photo was taken by my talented housemate. It had been unearthed from our commune church's sub-sub floor during a renovation.

The skeleton had died over 1300 years ago when Corsier was much different...woods and fields. He had been buried almost six centuries before the church was built over him and the other skeletons that were found.

When he died, he could never have imagined what life would have been like in 2013. At that time, he probably couldn't read, although if he were one of the Romans traipsing through the area, maybe he could have.

However, the idea of a mass produced book in pre-printing press times would have been beyond comprehension as would a photograph of his skeleton. There was no way he could have envisioned that the photo of his skeleton would also be available to anyone with an internet connection anywhere in the world.

I'd love to know more about him. Was he a Roman soldier, a local farmer, married, father? What did Corsier look like to him? The nearby grave to his with a woman and baby, were they his wife and child? What were his dreams, his hopes?

Of course, I'll never know the answers to these questions just as he'll never know that part of him would be visible to the world centuries after his death.