Alexis, a retired New York broker, feels an instant and magnetic attraction for Sofia, a school teacher in Moldova, after seeing her photo on Facebook. To find out who she was before, he undergoes hypnotic regression. Why does he feel crushed by guilt for killing a woman three hundred years ago, whom he loved like the light of his life? What he finds will strongly impact the reader emotionally. A gripping love story that extends for half a millennium in various reincarnations and in different places. But ultimately, an overpowering romantic relationship along with a puzzling mystery and an investigative journey into one's history.

He is Alexis, 70, a retired Greek American broker living in New York, the crazy capital of the world. She is Sofia, 34, a Moldovan woman and a school teacher in Chișinău, the drowsy capital of the Republic of Moldova. She reminds him of somebody he had met before, but details are foggy.

As Alexis is struck by unexplained love and passion the very moment he sees Sofia's photo on Facebook, he undergoes hypnotic regression to find out who this woman was in his past. He is pulled back in time to nine of his previous lives, and after each of his visits he learns a new lesson and draws a certain conclusion. Why is he feeling an instant and magnetic attraction for Sofia? What makes him be so consumed by love for her? And why does he feel crushed by guilt for killing a woman three hundred years ago, whom he loved like the light of his life? What he finds will strongly impact the reader emotionally.

A love affair that extends for half a millennium in various reincarnations and in different places. A gripping love story along with a puzzling mystery and an investigative journey into one's history, where Alexis experiences first-hand that what happened in the past, will also happen in the future. But ultimately, a meditation on life, history, culture wars, traditions, politics, the inevitability of death, and the mysteries of everlasting love.

Sergiu Urma was born in Romania, where he earned an M.A. in English Literature. After a two-year stint as a reporter for the state-run Radio Bucharest, he joined the Associated Press as a correspondent from 1974 to 1987. Forced to leave the country by Romania's communist authorities, he worked in Vienna, Austria, as an AP reporter covering Eastern Europe and the anticommunist revolutions occurring there. After arriving in the United States in 1990, he worked on AP's International Desk in New York as a reporter and financial news editor until 2014, when he retired after 40 years with the news organization. His first book, "Screwed: Dancing with the Generals," published by Amazon in 2015, is a memoir that takes the reader inside Ceausescu's Romania and sheds light on Urma's time as an AP reporter there, highlighting just how dangerous the political climate was during that ill-fated chapter of modern history. His two-act play "Chessgame" is an ingenious parable of a mechanical, on-command murder. As it progresses in the epic and historical matter, it becomes a violent indictment of totalitarianisms of any kind through grotesque, stylized, and shocking formulas.

The author can be reached by email at viorelurma@yahoo.com