A WOMAN OF SAMARIA

This stands well the inevitable comparison with The Robe and The Big Fisherman, as an absorbing story on a Biblical theme, by an excellent craftsman. It is the story of that magdalen, Photina, who gave Jesus water at Jacob's Well. The plot builds up to that incident, motivated by the events in Photina's life, her five marriages, and her adventure with ""that one who was not her husband"". Background material is fascinating; the colors, sounds, sights, smells, heat and cold of Samaria provide an atmosphere charged by political events with portent and foreboding. Through it all, Photina's fate marches inexorably -- a tragic succession of love, marriage, death, marriage, divorce, scandal-- and at the end desertion, an illegitimate relation- and finally salvation.