'Ishmael's Burden' chronicles the journey of Marcus in the year 312 A.D., a slave turned soldier in Roman Emperor Constantine's invasion of Italia, and the pivotal role he plays in the Emperor's divine vision of the Chi-Rho in the heavens on the eve of battle with his rival, Emperor Maxentius, at the Milvian Bridge outside of Rome. In This Sign the Emperor would indeed Conquer.

He is joined, though separated by a mere 1700 years, by a disparate though very unified group: a Whirling Dervish from war torn Iraq, a disturbed Lithuanian Rabi and a devout Black woman from Southern Louisiana. Together, pursuant to a mandate given the illegitimate first born son of the prophet Abraham, they join Marcus in a very discrete defense of Western Civilization's troubled history.

Across the folds of time, two parallel series of events unfold, bound by one small act of commission, to Love Thy Neighbor, and pitted against humanity's one grand ubiquitous act of omission...Apathy.

Ishmael's Burden is a novel of historical fiction, prequel to John Olsen's second novel Dark Blue Almost Black. Exhaustively researched and cross-referenced historical events are woven together with fictional characters to depict how events surrounding the Battle of the Milvian Bridge transpired.