IMAGINE YOU’RE a teenage boy kidnapped by a foreign army and dragged from your home to a land far far away, placed in a school to indoctrinate you in the ways of your pagan, polytheist captors, trying to survive while remaining faithful to the One True God.

That's the beginning of the story of the prophet Daniel, and that is the focus of the new novel by this week's guest and regular contributor to our monthly Iron and Myth series, Brian Godawa (godawa.com).

Brian, an award-winning screenwriter and best selling novelist, applies his gift of storytelling to the one of the most compelling characters of the Bible. Daniel saw the progression of the neo-Babylonian kingdom from the time of Nebuchadnezzar until it fell to the Persian king Cyrus the Great.

Daniel: Exile in Babylon is the first of a trilogy that tells the story of Daniel, his life, and the warfare in the unseen realm between God's loyal angels and the fallen rebels who compete with one another for power, even as they strive against their creator, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.