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.

The late ESPN host and commentator recounts years of struggle with mental illness.

Saunders (1955-2016) died of what co-writer Bacon (Endzone: The Rise, Fall, and Return of Michigan Football, 2015, etc.) describes as “a combination of enlarged heart, complications from his diabetes, and dysautonomia, which affects the automatic nervous system that regulates breathing, blood pressure, and heart rate.” In other words, he died at 61 of what are generally considered natural causes. The hardships Saunders recounts here are of a more existential nature: abused as a child, he grew up dependent on drugs and alcohol, more than once contemplating suicide: “I preferred fantasizing about dying in spectacular fashion than planning how I might actually do it.” Though inclined to self-belittlement rather than self-aggrandizement, he was also a formidable hockey player who didn’t mind the brutality of the sport. One key passage describes a series of maneuvers that by all rights should have led to banishment: “to understand a cross-check, imagine gripping a broomstick with your hands about three feet apart, then using the middle portion to smash someone’s face while he’s skating toward you.” Deciding he was better suited to the other side of the glass, Saunders worked his way through the ranks of sports reporting and announcing, beginning with a minor station in New Brunswick and ending up at the pinnacle, ESPN. Even there, he writes, he contemplated leaping from the Tappan Zee bridge and ending his unhappiness. Of as much interest as his difficulties are his efforts to overcome illness, from cognitive therapy to medication and hospitalization; some of it worked, at least for a while, but much did not. Saunders writes without much flair but with plenty of awareness. “Depression allows you to have incredible insights into other people’s souls yet still be incapable of transferring those insights to your own situation,” he writes—though the chief point of his tale is that insight can come, if at a price.

A story that merits both sympathy and attention.