Assaf Raz immigrated from Israel to Venice Beach, CA, in his early twenties and began the journey to citizenship in a country he had long studied and revered. For more than two decades, he built his American Dream through real estate and a handful of other entrepreneurial pursuits. After a spiritual rebirth in his early thirties, he found the woman from his dreams, started a family, and began to write. First, he wrote a short memoir about his awakening (Rite of Passage) and then he started a novel fueled by his love of Roman history and the alternative history genre. He quickly set aside that project for the Old Glory series when his concerns about America piqued in 2020 during the lockdown and riots that unfolded in the streets where he lived and worked. Assaf and his family have been on the road since 2022 .