A historically intriguing investigation that falls flat as a panoramic drama.
A historical novel explores the biblically undocumented years of Jesus’ life.
When Jesus is only 12 years old, his great uncle Joseph of Arimathea—generally referred to as Rama—decides his nephew is ready for a deeper educational experience, one that will chasten his tendency to be “falsely sure of himself.” Rama once studied under the famously wise druids in Britannicum—they have “educated members of the noble and royal families of most of the world”—at Ynys Witrin, a remote place, and he believes Jesus would benefit from the same opportunity. Rama takes him on one of his business trips—he supervises the mining operations all across the Roman Empire—and leaves Jesus under the care of the druids for years. There, he learns Ogham, a hermetic language devised to confound the first Roman conquerors. Saunders tracks the religious relics that are a historical testament to Jesus’ educational experience, including a record of his own thoughts etched in Ogham of extraordinary scriptural experiences: “The lance and the cruets are suggestive, but this skin with Ogham is the equivalent of other Apocrypha; it is a fifth Gospel, the Gospel according to Jesus. As short and direct as it is, it is more powerful and valuable than all the others.” The author also conjures two chronologically disparate subplots. In the 16th century, Abbot Richard Whiting refuses to relinquish the relics to King Henry VIII, who plans to use them to legitimize the establishment of his own church outside of papal authority. Before they can be taken by force, Whiting spirits them to the king of Spain, Carlos I. And in a contemporary narrative thread, Bo Chancellor, a New Orleans lawyer, is unwittingly drawn into the search for the relics and their explosive theological significance.
Saunders’ historical research is as impressively erudite as it is inventive—the highlight of the book is the attempt, more creative than rigorously scholarly, to imagine the lost years of Jesus’ life. In the process, the author also deftly fills in the blanks of Joseph of Arimathea’s existence too, “a virtual unknown in the Bible until the last chapters of the four Gospels.” Still, for all of its intellectual strengths, the ambitious novel struggles as a literary drama—simply too much is crammed into it, and it often reads like a congested history textbook more than a vibrant fictional tale. It doesn’t help that Saunders’ prose inclines to the melodramatic and can be unwieldy. At one point, Whiting’s interrogator clumsily declaims: “Then you shall all three be damned to hades for what you have done and continue to do. For we shall continue our search and, when we find all we need, you shall regret that you did not respond to the most generous offer of leniency from His Majesty. You shall feel the wrath.”
A historically intriguing investigation that falls flat as a panoramic drama.Pub Date: Dec. 4, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64559-495-6
Page Count: 500
Publisher: Covenant Books
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
Vintage Follett. His fans will be pleased.
A dramatic, complex imagining of the origins of Stonehenge.
In about 2500 B.C.E. on the Great Plain, Seft and his family collect flints in a mine. He dislikes the work, and the motherless lad hates the abuse he gets from his father and brothers. He leaves them and arrives at a wooden monument where sacred events such as the Midsummer Rite take place. There are also circles of stones that help predict equinoxes, solstices, even eclipses. This is a world where the customary greeting is “May the Sun God smile on you,” and everyone is a year older on Midsummer Day. Except for a priestess or two, no one can count beyond fingers and toes—to indicate 30, they show both hands, point to both feet, then show both hands again. Casual sex is common, and sex between women is less common but not taboo. Joia, a young woman who becomes a priestess, wonders about her sexuality. After a fire destroys the Monument, she leads a bold effort to rebuild it in stone. To please the gods, they must haul 10 giant stones from distant Stony Valley. Of course neither machinery nor roads exist, so the difficulties are extraordinary. Although the project has its detractors, hundreds of able-bodied people are willing to help. Craftspeople known as cleverhands construct a sled and a road, and they make the rope to wrap around the stones. Many, many others pull. And pull. Meanwhile, the three principal groups—farmers, woodlanders, and herders—all have their separate interests. There is talk of war, which Joia has never seen in her lifetime. Soon it seems inevitable that the powerful farmers will not only start one but win it, unless heroes like Seft and Joia can come up with a creative plan. But there is also the matter of love for Joia in this well-plotted and well-told yarn. The story has a lot of characters from multiple tribes, and they can be hard to keep track of. A page in the front of the book listing who’s who would be helpful.
Vintage Follett. His fans will be pleased.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781538772775
Page Count: 704
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
