Galilee was published by HarperCollins in 1998. The novel traces the intertwined histories of two families: the Gearys, an American dynasty of enormous wealth and political influence (modeled loosely on the Kennedys), and the Barbarossas, an ancient family of supernatural beings who live on an island off the coast of North Carolina. The families have been connected for generations through love affairs, betrayals, and a curse that binds them together.
The narrator is Maddox Barbarossa, a crippled, reclusive member of the supernatural family, who is writing the history of both dynasties from his room in the family estate. His unreliability — he admits to inventing scenes he did not witness, to filling gaps with speculation, and to being motivated as much by spite as by truth — gives the novel a metafictional dimension that complicates its gothic romance.
Galilee Barbarossa, the family’s most charismatic member — beautiful, ageless, sexually magnetic — is the novel’s romantic center. His affair with Rachel Pallenberg, who has married into the Geary family, precipitates the crisis that brings both dynasties to the brink of destruction. Barker uses the family saga structure to explore themes he had addressed in fantasy settings: the relationship between desire and destruction, the cost of immortality, the corruption of power across generations.
Collecting Galilee
First edition (HarperCollins, New York, 1998): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $20–$50
- Very good/very good: $10–$25
- Signed: $50–$150