Illustrated original works for a new generation of readers.

A sequence of narrative poems about the most influential man who ever lived — Yeshua — better known as Jesus of Nazareth.

England. 1740. The world’s greatest composer – George Frideric Handel – has enthralled London audiences for 25 years, but has suffered a paralytic stroke. His recent opera season flopped and he is bankrupt, being sued. He is too broke to retire.

His favorite soprano has been caught in a forbidden love affair, her sordid story headlining the press. And his librettist, from one of the wealthiest families in Britain, is despondent over the suicide of his beloved younger brother and unable to interest Handel in his new libretto.

Thus, three people in the midst of their “dark nights of the soul,” undertake what seems a divinely inspired mission in which they find healing, forgiveness and a new creative energy. Messiah has become the most performed Oratorio in the world since 1742, presented over 200 times a year just in the United States.

Based entirely on historical events, immersive, rich in setting, character and with spiritually redemptive themes, this classic story is the backstory to Handel’s masterpiece.

Black Hawk Songs is a 30-poem sequence about the famous chief of the Sauk and Fox tribe. They examine Black Hawk's transformation from boy to warrior to chief to defeated, embittered old man. They probe the conflicts he faced along the way: man against man, man against nature, man against himself. The poems are about the battles he waged, his relationship with the white man and with members of his tribe, his vision of himself.

In a larger sense the poems are about the Indian experience in America—they tell a story of lost lands, of men broken, of tribes decimated. As critic and poet Laurence Lieberman has commented, "it is a very painful book to read, since so much of it is a severe indictment of the white American culture."

"Passionately unafraid renderings of a collective past in that energized language Borich manages to control so well as a spiritualizer of the word." — Michael S. Harper, poet.

"In his themes which range from violence to intense feelings for humanity, Michael Borich evokes brilliant images of a past America. His obvious kinship with the world of Nature allies him with the spirit of the American Indian." — Dee Brown, author of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.

"The poetry's great drive, their inner coherence, above all their urgent restoration of an almost-lost past make this one of the most impressive first books I've read in a long time." — John Unterecker, poet and critic.