A gripping, if thin, alternate history narrative with a rebellious Jesus.
A historical novel offers a very different Jesus from the one in the New Testament.
Schwartz’s Jesus narrates the story himself and opens it with a volley of stunning revelations. Jesus of Gennesareth refers to himself as the Hasmonean king of Israel, holed up in the mountain fortress of Masada in C.E. 73 as the place is besieged by Romans. He’s almost 80 years old, and his crucifixion half a century earlier gave rise to the story of Jesus of Nazareth—a tale that was subsequently enlarged into the familiar New Testament narrative. This text hid the fact that the true son of God was alive and well. Having leveled these bombshells, this Jesus then tells his story, starting with attending a bar mitzvah and learning that his cousin John, son of Zacharias, was the Hasmonean king. Jesus also discovers that the title will come to him on his relative’s death. In the pages that follow, the author retells the traditional story—the disciples, Mary Magdalene, the clashes with the Romans, and so on—from a radically different perspective. This culminates in an imaginative version of the crucifixion in which Schwartz deftly shows how Jesus is secretly drugged unconscious and taken down alive in order to heal and escape with his wife and disciples. Throughout, the author presents readers with an intriguing protagonist. This Jesus fervently believes in his own lessons of peace and tolerance. He hopes to continue preaching even while the legend of Jesus of Nazareth steadily grows, expanding to include outlandish miracle stories and claims of a virgin birth. Jesus of Gennesareth is dismayed by all this: “I was amazed that pagans would require such strange things to believe the messages I had taught.” Unfortunately, he quickly finds himself back in conflict with the Romans, stuck in Masada with a society of his faithful plus a core of Jewish zealots, all of whom are doomed to die when the siege succeeds. Schwartz tells this riveting story clearly and succinctly but with a paucity of rich details. Many of his readers will doubtless be wishing the inventive tale had a great deal more specifics and complexity.
A gripping, if thin, alternate history narrative with a rebellious Jesus.Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2020
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 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
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