A captivating blend of historical conjecture and literary contrivance.
In Kunkel’s debut series starter, Gaius Pontius Pilate fakes Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection as part of a political conspiracy.
In this alternate version of well-known biblical events, Pilate is mired in a dreary job as the governor of Judea, “stuck out here at the edges of the empire in a rebellious province.” His wife, Claudia, detests the post, and after three miscarriages, she’s taken to looking for solace in insobriety; it provides her with her only relief from the despair into which she has sunk. Pilate has difficult relationships with members of Judea’s Jewish community—especially Caiaphas, the High Priest of the Sanhedrin, who conspires to ruin his reputation with Emperor Tiberius and incites riots among volatile insurgents. When Caiaphas demands that Jesus, an increasingly popular preacher, be arrested and executed for treason—apparently, Jesus claims to be the King of the Jews—Pilate sees an opportunity to gain the upper hand in their contest for power. He invokes Protocol XIX, which permits him to “substitute an innocent person for one who deserves punishment,” effectively giving him the power to execute someone else and pretend the victim is Jesus. Pilate chooses Barabbas, “one of the more notorious rebels in the region,” and hides Jesus away. He also arranges the appearance of Jesus’ resurrection, using it as a chance to humiliate Caiaphas in a tantalizingly original reinterpretation of the New Testament story. Meanwhile, Marcus and Cato, two soldiers, investigate a peculiar plot against King Herod Antipas that seems motivated by revenge for his past criminal transgressions.
Kunkel’s novel offers readers a version of biblical lore that combines a boldly heretical view—that Jesus’ resurrection was faked—with one that’s far more orthodox: that Jesus was capable of working great miracles, including raising Lazarus from the dead and healing the sick. Other characters, too, see in him something truly special, if not outrightly divine: “His humanity may have given him all the doubts and questions of your typical person but something else dwelt inside of him.” In addition, the author astutely broaches Jesus’ reluctance to partake in Pilate’s designs as well as his disappointment; he’s depicted as understanding his death to be a matter of prophecy and his resurrection as final proof of his mission. Quintus, a tribune, attempts to console him: “I don’t know what these visions are you’re talking about. Here’s what I see. Your religion abandoned you. Your followers betrayed you. But Rome has not abandoned you, my friend.” Over the course of the novel, Jesus emerges as grippingly mysterious but also endearingly human—a spiritually gifted man beset by doubt about his greater purpose. Kunkel’s command of the historical period is impressive, and he fills in some blanks—for example, very little is known for certain about Pilate’s life—with an impressive combination of imaginative hypothesis and dramatic artfulness. In the end, the author delivers a work that isn’t a dry scholarly exercise but an engaging novelistic look into unconsidered possibilities.
A captivating blend of historical conjecture and literary contrivance.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2022
ISBN: 9798986769400
Page Count: 420
Publisher: Valeria Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.
Stockett heads to Mississippi for another historical novel about feisty women.
This time, perhaps recalling criticisms of cultural appropriation in The Help (2009), she sticks to feisty white women, with one exception. The setting is Oxford in 1933. For two miserable years, 11-year-old Meg has lived in “the Orphan,” a county asylum for parentless girls. Chairlady Garnett—a villain so one-note she’d twirl a mustache if she had one—makes it her mission to ostracize the older girls she deems unadoptable, stigmatizing them as offspring of the “feebleminded” mothers who abandoned them. She particularly has it in for smart, sassy Meg, who refuses to believe her mother’s mysterious disappearance was deliberate. Elsewhere in Oxford, Birdie Calhoun comes to visit her sister Frances, who married a wealthy banker, to ask for money on behalf of their mother and grandmother back in Footely. Frances isn’t thrilled by this reminder of her impoverished small-town origins. But she’s trying to climb up in Oxford society by volunteering at the Orphan, the asylum’s books need to be done before the state inspector shows up in a few weeks, and Birdie is a bookkeeper. Having neatly arranged to keep Birdie in town and draw these two storylines together, Stockett goes on to spin a compulsively readable yarn with enough plot for a half-dozen novels. Birdie and Meg become friends, Meg is adopted despite Garnett’s best efforts, Meg’s mother turns up at the Orphan demanding to know where her child is—and that’s less than a quarter of the way through a long, winding narrative that keeps piling on more dramatic developments until all loose ends are neatly, if hastily, wrapped up in the final pages. Stockett might be making a point about Southern women facing facts and standing up for themselves, but mostly this is just a satisfyingly twisty tale that should make a great miniseries.
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781954118812
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
A flawed but necessary read about a dark moment in American history.
See’s latest novel exposes a forgotten, ugly chapter in LA history—the brutal 1871 massacre of 18 Chinese immigrant men and boys.
In July 1870, two Chinese women arrive in Lo Sang, a dusty frontier town known by its white and Hispanic residents as Los Angeles. Seventeen-year-old Dove, the bound-footed daughter of an imperial scholar fallen on hard times, is the new second wife of Old Man Sing, a merchant in the tiny Chinese community on Calle de los Negros. Barefoot, dark-skinned Petal, sold into servitude to a Gold Mountain tong by her desperately poor peasant father, is destined for the Midnight Garden, a bawdy house owned by Headman Sam. Witnessing the newcomers’ arrival is Moon, the wife of a successful doctor of traditional Chinese medicine. Unlike Petal and Dove, she speaks English, and she assists her husband in his clinic. The three alternating narratives—Petal tells her story as she lives it in 1870; an elderly Moon recalls past events from 1926; and Dove’s tale is recounted in a distant third-person voice—create a portrait of a tiny immigrant community surrounded by a hostile culture and ruled by rival tongs. It’s a shootout between these disputing factions that sets off the horrifying events of Oct. 24, 1871, when a mob of about 500 white and Latine residents torture and lynch their Chinese victims. Although meticulously researched, See’s novel feels curiously flat. Despite continual descriptions of gunfights breaking out, Los Angeles never fully comes to life as a rough-and-tumble Wild West town. While the author’s female protagonists, inspired by historical figures, are well drawn (kudos to the feisty and determined Petal), most of her male characters—Chinese, Anglo, and Mexican—are as flat and indistinguishable as cardboard. Another drawback is See’s stilted and stylized dialogue, typical of historical fiction but wearying to the modern reader.
A flawed but necessary read about a dark moment in American history.Pub Date: June 9, 2026
ISBN: 9781982117054
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2026
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