Bound for Eternity

"Highly authentic, written by an archaeologist, BOUND FOR ETERNITY is a great read. The museum setting was both eerie and fascinating. I hope to see Lisa Donahue in many books to come."

Barbara D'Amato, Chicago author of the Cat Marsala series and thrillers such as Death of a Thousand Cuts

"A brilliantly compelling novel-If you like mysteries, you'll LOVE this book."
Nancy B. Daversa-Executive Producer of HMC-TV.

Review posted on Amazon.com (6/7/2005):
"Most good fiction today combines expert knowledge of something with an interesting plot -they makes us feel as if we are taking an educational vacation. Sarah knows alot about Egyptian Mummies and hard pressed archaeological museums. You can smell the dust, feel the fur, taste the wine, see the blood, and nod your head at the Filemaker Pro frustrations. It's a darn good read and cheaper than a Sierra Club vacation. My only question is when is the next one coming?"
-F. Stoneback, New York.

Book Review by Bill Gresens, Mississippi Valley Archaeology Center, University of Wisconsin - La Crosse
"Her protagonist is an intelligent and sympathetic character-a recently widowed single mom who struggles with the stresses and strains of daily life while trying to turn her limited term curator job at the Boston University Museum of Archaeology and History into a permanent position. She has been assigned to curate a new exhibit on Egyptian funerary practices, first dubbed "Crypts and Queens," and later changed to the more elegant "Bound for Eternity," cleverly playing upon the double meaning of "bound" when applied to Egyptian mummies. As if the exhibit, her competing with a seemingly total twit named Carl Jacobson and her harried home life were not enough to cause stress and strain on Lisa, her discovery of the brutally murdered body of a museum colleague, preparatory Marion Grainger throws Lisa and the entire museum staff into a tizzy and a panic. Add to this soupcon a boss who seems to act more mysteriously than necessary, colleagues whose various dysfunctional attributes make them logical suspects, the apparently deliberate misplacement of museum artifacts and the appearance of artifacts that shouldn't be there, and finally the murder of yet a second museum staff member within the confines of the museum-and now you have the ingredients of a very good mystery novel!"
December 2005

Review by Angela Warfield, The Hub Weekly (October 2005):
"...The author, Sarah Wisseman, does an exceptional job of setting the scene and of relating information about the secondary plotline, the history of the artifacts within the museum. If I did not know that she has an extensive academic background in Egyptian culture and archeology, I would have known without a doubt that Wisseman did her homework before starting this book."

The Dead Sea Codex

"What a wonderful story! Author Sarah Wisseman takes us on a journey with archaeologist Lisa Donahue, as she arrives in Jerusalem to arrange for artifacts to be loaned to her home museum in Philadelphia. Her mission becomes complicated almost immediately by the discovery of a small piece of papyrus stuck to the inside of one of the jars she is examining. Meeting up with old friend and ex-lover Greg Manzur and his friends Salima and Farid, they decipher some of the ancient text. It is possible that the papyrus is part of the Deborah Codex – books written by one of the twelve female apostles of Jesus. Where the rest of the documents are is anyone’s guess.
Other people are also interested in the rest of the codex. Some want to sell it to the highest bidder. But there is another group at work, people who would destroy the codex, to keep its supposedly heretic teachings from ever seeing the light of day. It’s a race against time and their opponents. Lisa and her friends take their very lives in their hands – for knowledge and to make sure the Dead Sea Codex is found and kept safe.
I enjoyed this book immensely. Lisa Donohue is a wonderful character, three dimensional – her job, her duty and her left-over feelings for Greg make her jump off the page. It was obvious to me, even before reading her biography, that the author had been to Israel. Her descriptions of the land, Jerusalem and its surrounding landmarks and the people transported me to the Middle East. Intrigue, romance, and the quick pace of this novel made it easy to read and hard to stop... (more).
Lighthouse Book Reviews, Feburary 2006.

March 2006 review by Michael Edelson:"This book opens with a really excellent description of a part of Old Jerusalem, truly proof that the writer has lived in Israel. The descriptions of the shouk, the smells of the street vendors' foods, the descriptions of the people and places are all unique to Israel. This book is filled with all that a book about life in the Middle East can afford, if you are seeking that life, and some of life on the dangerous side. It is a good story, but in some areas it is predictable too. It is a typical book of suspense, history, intrigue, the criminal side of the antiquities,etc.
This book is written from the view of the main character, archaeologist and museum curator Lisa Donahue, but also from the views of other characters, her ex-boyfriend Gregory Manzur, a Jordanian epigrapher, a Lebanese museum curator, an Arab-Israeli registrar, and an American conservator. We see a cross-cut of the population of Israel.
We see, hear and feel all that is going through these people as they are pulled deeper and deeper into a mystery and all the suspense within it. In the end we learn that a small piece of papyrus Lisa found in an urn earlier in the book is part of a codex that some Christian fanatics are trying to find to keep from becoming known to the rest of the world. That codex gives details about the teachings of Jesus's female disciples..."

"Sarah Wisseman’s second entry in the Lisa Dona hue series is entertaining and satisfying. It is a slim volume (only 150 pages in length) and this is a strength. Her prose is spare but evocative and one gains an insight into the sights and smells and atmosphere of Israel, from the souks of the Old City to the incredible desolation of the Dead Sea area. The characters are credible and the adventure and the danger—especially in the environment of the Dead Sea caves—are palpable. I look forward to more of Lisa’s archaeological adventures—as either a care-free ABD or as a world-weary widow and single parent."
Review by Bill Grescens,Mississippi Valley Archaeology Center at University of Wisconsin at LaCrosse.

Review by Tami Brady:
"...The Dead Sea Codex is full of mystery, intrigue, and the potential questioning of everything we’ve believed true of Christianity and its origins. This smart mystery allows the reader to travel to Israel and become an archaeologist, and adventurer, and treasure hunter for just a little while."