Ophelia's Gold
by Susan Smith Nash
Ophelia's Gold is a haunting literary thriller that interweaves love, madness, and the relentless pursuit of treasure across landscapes ranging from the jungles of Vietnam-era Laos to the karst caves of Oklahoma and the deserts of California. At its heart is Ophelia, a woman battling seizure disorder and psychological demons, who becomes entangled once more with her ex-husband Stanton Harville as they attempt to solve the mystery that destroyed his father—a Vietnam pilot who smuggled a priceless jade statue of the goddess Tara from a secret Buddhist temple called "God's Hostage." As Ophelia and Stanton hunt for the lost artifacts through caves, abandoned mines, and the strange religious compound of the Yahweh Brethren, they confront their own captivity: to trauma, to obsessive love, and to the curses—real or imagined—that bind them. With echoes of treasure-hunting fathers, tragic first loves, and the shadow of South American intrigue, the novel asks whether redemption can b
Episodes
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Ophelia's Gold: Chapter 40 - Dark Angel of Deliverance
In the novel's climax, Ophelia phones Col. Harville during a raging storm, promising to deliver the jade Tara that has driven him mad for decades. As lightning cracks, she contemplates the strange mathematics of captivity and love: "Another hostage would be taken. Another innocence would be…
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Ophelia's Gold: Chapter 39 - Return to Righteous City
At her grandmother's grave in Righteous City, Ophelia trembles with unwanted visions and fears another fugue state. She questions whether Stanton's "seduction" of her with the treasure hunt reveals love or manipulation—and whether she even cares anymore.
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Ophelia's Gold: Chapter 38 - The Devil's Redemption
Inside the Cave of Whispers, Ophelia offers to return the jade mandala carvings to whoever wants them—but insists the Tara statue belongs to Stanton's father. Two young LDS missionaries interrupt, revealing that the Yahweh Brethren likely have no connection to the smuggled artifacts. Back at the...
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Ophelia's Gold: Chapter 37 - The Goddess's Fugue
Col. Harville travels to Cabo San Lucas, following cryptic instructions to "pass under the arches." After a midnight boat trip through crashing surf, he hears the voice of God commanding him to return to the Oasis and wait. Tara's light flickers and dies in his mind's eye; he is now completely...
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Ophelia's Gold: Chapter 32 - The Forgotten Soldier
Captain Harville, now declared MIA, wraps his beloved jade Tara in batik cloth in his bamboo hut. Hallucinations blend with memories—his son's birth, his dying comrade—as Tara's shadow beckons him into madness. He is "truly lost."
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Ophelia's Gold: Chapter 33 - Postcards from a Dream
Ophelia and her father explore the Blue Cave in Arizona but find no Pink Lady treasure—only fur collars that initially appear to be scalps, and a cache of Victorian postcards depicting Marrakesh. The dreamlike images suggest displacement and longing for impossible elsewheres.
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Ophelia's Gold: Chapter 34 - Black Gold
Returning to her father's oil and gas business, Ophelia carries lucky amulets to a high-risk wildcat well in rural Oklahoma. The chapter interweaves petroleum geology, environmental concerns, and memories of Stanton as the drill finally hits a promising zone—offering hope of financial and…
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Ophelia's Gold: Chapter 35 - Machine in the Garden
Col. Harville reads about Jean Tinguely's self-destructing sculpture in the Nevada desert while contemplating his own breakdown. At his farm near Righteous City, wild roses and bamboo music cannot mask the kinetic destruction he carries within.
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Ophelia's Gold: Chapter 36 - The Lucky Stiff Mine and Smelter, Or, the Consequences of Invading Paraguay
Driving through Nevada with her father, Ophelia confesses that her work in South America put her life at risk. She was mistaken for a spy, beaten, and nearly killed. She pledges to return to treasure hunting and exploration—and perhaps to reconnect with Stanton.
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Ophelia's Gold: Chapter 31 - Runway to Oblivion
Ophelia accompanies Stanton to a secret airstrip in a mangrove swamp, where he evaluates the crumbling runway for unnamed clients. Small planes land cargo that neither asks about. Their shared willingness to embrace danger becomes erotic, their futures "intertwined."
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Ophelia's Gold: Chapter 30 - Moonlight in Manaus
Stranded in Manaus after missing her flight home from South America, Ophelia reflects on the bruises from a business contact who attacked her, the Pombero incubus of Guarani legend, and the "spiderweb" lace of Paraguay that comes alive when hearts are impure.
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Ophelia's Gold: Chapter 29 - Yahweh Brethren
Ophelia and Stanton eat breakfast at the Speedie Trip, now operated by the mysterious Yahweh Brethren who dress in homespun clothes and sell organic goods. The LDS missionaries on bicycles seem far more approachable than the compound's secretive inhabitants.
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Ophelia's Gold: Chapter 28 - Fragile Aura
Dad's aura-detecting equipment reveals that Ophelia's personal frequency is "infinitely negative" and "very fragile." His advice—that she attracts the wrong types because of her spectral vulnerability—offers little comfort as she contemplates her pattern of destructive relationships.
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Ophelia's Gold: Chapter 27 - Lost in the Spiderwebs of Night
lost in the spiderwebs of night
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Ophelia's Gold: Chapter 26 - Desert Warfare
Captain Harville endures an absurd military briefing about Genghis Khan's supply-line tactics while preparing for secret missions in Laos. A plain embassy worker's biting wit catches his attention before he retreats to back alleys, shooting rats with his Walther P38 to purge his rage.
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Ophelia's Gold: Chapter 25 - Secrets of the Hidden Trunk
The trunk's contents—a girl's trousseau, jewelry, and that inexplicable jeweled dagger—suggest a young woman planning to elope who never escaped. Ophelia identifies with this unknown girl's thwarted dreams while Marcus spirals deeper into grief over his mother.
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Ophelia's Gold: Chapter 24 - Treasure at Living Springs
Following clues on the old maps, Marcus and Ophelia discover a small digging near a desert spring containing an old tin trunk. Instead of gold, they find women's Victorian clothing, photographs, and a jeweled dagger—suggesting an entirely different story than expected.
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Ophelia's Gold: Chapter 23 - All that Glitters
Marcus and Ophelia search for Farley Kritzoff's treasure at an abandoned California mine. Marcus hammers rocks with bitter fury while telling the tale of Kritzoff, his treacherous partner Jeremiah, and the beautiful mail-order bride Destella whose death created the legend of the "cursed" gold.
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Ophelia's Gold: Chapter 22 - Fugue State
In Palm Springs Regional Hospital, a neurologist rules out brain tumors but suggests Ophelia may have epilepsy—or psychological causes. The paintings on his wall, depicting fragmented figures in motion, perfectly represent her experience of time and consciousness.
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Ophelia's Gold: Chapter 20 - Michelangelo's Revenge
The absurd circumstances of Marcus's mother's death—a plaster Michelangelo head falling from her nightstand—give way to deeper mystery when Marcus reveals what she was reaching for: the bundle of treasure maps and a jeweled dagger that would link her to the Farley Kritzoff legend.
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Ophelia's Gold: Chapter 21 - Map Dowsing
map dowsing
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Ophelia's Gold: Chapter 19 - The Jade Tara
Captain Harville's obsession with the jade statue of Tara reaches fever pitch as he returns repeatedly to the hidden temple, driven by desire that he perceives as purifying love. The statue's iridescent green-pink jade becomes his only hope for salvation from the horrors of war.
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Ophelia's Gold: Chapter 18 - The Destiny Maker
Marcus and Ophelia, both teenagers, share their first kiss beside his family's pool on the night his mother died. He gives her the "cursed" treasure maps, and she promises to help uncover their secrets—a vow that will shape decades of her life.
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Ophelia's Gold: Chapter 17 - The Hidden Temple
In a flashback to his Vietnam service, young Captain Harville navigates a blood-dark Laotian river to a vine-covered Buddhist stupa where a diminutive monk warns him about becoming one of the temple's "Keepers." He awakens with no memory of his return—but a dragon tattoo seared into his palm.
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Ophelia's Gold: Chapter 16 - Savage Peace
Ophelia and Stanton meet in South Beach, Miami, their dangerous professions hinted at through references to death squads, surveillance, and an "Ambassador" who assigns questionnaires. Their mutual darkness creates an instant, violent attraction as they discuss what it means to be "God's Hostage."
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Ophelia's Gold: Chapter 15 - Trap Door to Oblivion
Inside the Cave of Whispers, Stanton reveals the "Trap Door"—a collapsed limestone floor above a raging underground river. The perfect booby trap for hiding treasure, it could also claim the lives of the unwary. Their passionate embrace at the cave's edge is interrupted by two young men in black...
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Ophelia's Gold: Chapter 14 - Cave of Whispers
Stanton pulls Ophelia back from the entrance of a limestone cave near Three Horses River, warning her of a deadly drop into an underground river. The cave's "whispers" are the sound of rushing water—and possibly the perfect hiding place for stolen jade.
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Ophelia's Gold: Chapter 13 - The Treasure Detector
Ophelia's father demonstrates his plasma-ball Vector Generator, which can theoretically locate treasure by matching frequency signatures. However, treasure typically registers as "infinitely negative"—a warning that seeking it may destroy the seeker.
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Ophelia's Gold: Chapter 12 - Treasure of the Blue Cave
Dad explains the legend of the Pink Lady Bandits—Captain Endes-Wicker and Miss Rosamund, displaced Confederate refugees who became Robin Hood-style thieves in northern Arizona. Their treasure, hidden in a "Blue Cave," becomes another thread in the novel's tapestry of buried secrets and dangerous...
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Ophelia's Gold: Chapter 11: Farley's Treasure Map
In the aftermath of Marcus's mother's sudden death—killed by a falling plaster Michelangelo head while reaching for something beside her bed—young Ophelia receives a bundle of old treasure maps purchased at a yard sale. The maps belonged to Farley Kritzoff, a Russian immigrant gold prospector…
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Ophelia's Gold: Chapter 10: Energy Sink Point
Dad's latest detection equipment identifies an "infinitely negative" energy signature in southeastern Oklahoma—the exact location of Yahweh Springs. When Ophelia's body reacts violently to this discovery, she suffers a seizure, revealing that her own frequencies may be dangerously attuned to...
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Ophelia's Gold: Chapter 9 - Santa Ana Secrets
Another Palm Springs flashback reveals the 15-year-old Ophelia struggling with unnamed emotional turmoil, secretly binge-eating in her hotel room while Santa Ana winds howl outside. The chapter establishes her long history of using food and pain to manage overwhelming feelings she cannot name.
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Ophelia's Gold: Chapter 8 - Three Horses River
Attempting to explore Stanton's childhood home near Yahweh Springs, Ophelia nearly drowns when a rope bridge collapses over the flooding river. Scrambling up a muddy bank, she discovers a cave entrance—and realizes that "kinaesthetic memory" works both ways, as her scarred leg remembers old...
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Ophelia's Gold: Chapter 7 - The Cabinet of Dr. Cartografi
Ophelia's father reveals his secret map room containing decades of treasure hunting research, organized in an antique cabinet labeled "Dr. Cartografi." He hints that if she reunites with Stanton, perhaps the three of them can finally complete the searches that have consumed his life.
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Ophelia's Gold: Chapter 6 - Halcyon Days
A flashback to 1973 Palm Springs finds a young Ophelia on a borrowed bicycle riding toward desert horseback trails. The memory establishes the "before" of her life—before seizures, before trauma—and introduces the halcyon innocence that subsequent chapters will systematically dismantle.
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Ophelia's Gold: Chapter 5 - Reich's Basement
In her father's basement laboratory, Ophelia explores his collection of unconventional detection equipment, including orgone energy accumulators and crystal amplifiers. Dad's experiments bridge pseudoscience and genuine geophysical research, foreshadowing the detection technologies that will…
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Ophelia's Gold: Chapter 4 - Yahweh Springs
Ophelia and Stanton venture to the decaying Victorian spa town where his family once lived, hoping that "kinaesthetic memory" will help him recall where his father hid the jade artifacts. The abandoned pavilion, creeping vines, and ominous hymns from the Yahweh Brethren compound create an...
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Ophelia's Gold: Chapter 3 - God's Hostage
Sitting at her grandmother's grave in Rose Hill Cemetery, Ophelia learns from Stanton that "God's Hostage" is not merely his father's delusion but the name of a hidden Laotian temple—and a priceless jade statue of the goddess Tara that his father smuggled home and then lost. The pink-gold…
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Ophelia's Gold: Chapter 2 - Ouija Board
At a Holiday Inn bar in Righteous City, Oklahoma, Ophelia and Stanton encounter local women attempting to contact spirits through a Ouija board while their own troubled reconciliation hangs in the balance. The absurdity of the séance becomes a backdrop for rekindled passion, and the phrase…
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Ophelia's Gold: Chapter 1 - The Devil's Oasis
The narrator travels to a dilapidated motel near Yorktown, Texas, driven by intuition rather than reason, to meet the estranged father of Stanton, a man she once loved obsessively. The motel room is dark and claustrophobic, mirroring the psychological tension of the encounter. The father, a…
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About this show
Ophelia's Gold is a haunting literary thriller that interweaves love, madness, and the relentless pursuit of treasure across landscapes ranging from the jungles of Vietnam-era Laos to the karst caves of Oklahoma and the deserts of California. At its heart is Ophelia, a woman battling seizure disorder and psychological demons, who becomes entangled once more with her ex-husband Stanton Harville as they attempt to solve the mystery that destroyed his father—a Vietnam pilot who smuggled a priceless jade statue of the goddess Tara from a secret Buddhist temple called "God's Hostage." As Ophelia and Stanton hunt for the lost artifacts through caves, abandoned mines, and the strange religious compound of the Yahweh Brethren, they confront their own captivity: to trauma, to obsessive love, and to the curses—real or imagined—that bind them. With echoes of treasure-hunting fathers, tragic first loves, and the shadow of South American intrigue, the novel asks whether redemption can b
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Susan Smith Nash