I did. I fell in love with an enchanting Balinese girl and moved to the Island of the Gods. Twenty years later my children and I fled Bali ahead of plans for murder.

Six years on, the nightmare has not ended. We can't return to Bali, while their mother refuses to leave Bali to see her children. Legal cases, including criminal investigations, in both Indonesia and California drag on.

Through those six years, I eventually discovered that what I had once mistaken for vague family problems were in fact events in a plan stretching back to the earliest days of our marriage, involving false Hindu ceremonies and fraudulent documents and backed by members of the Bali community, police, courts, public prosecutors – even my own attorneys at one of the best-known law offices in Bali - in a stunning deception by a group known in Indonesia as a "Law Mafia," or in Bali, as a "Mafia of the Gods."

I am a writer, so I wrote a book. I believe - and I'm happy my early readers agree - that Eleven Demons rivals any novel in intricate plot, memorable characters, and ever-mounting suspense. Eleven Demons is a thriller, a love story, a glimpse into a world of faith and dark magic, a journey through an exotic land, an essential primer of Indonesian law, a history of an astonishing case, an exploration of the limits of loyalty and greed. It is not, however, a map of shortcuts to Paradise.