Making a departure from my non-fiction reading, I picked up a historical novel about the most famous mother of all time.

The story starts out with Miriam and her family struggling to survive the yoke of the tyrannical Roman rule under King Herod. By a freak accident, Miriam's father is set to be crucified. The precocious Miriam boldly sets out to rescue him with the help of a dangerous friend, Barrabas.

It's a crisp book that doesn't weight the soul down with diatribes of heavy handed preaching. OK, there are a couple of them but most of the story focused on Miriam and how she became the Virgin Mary.

At the end, the author tacked on the Gospel of Mary which will never find its way to the Bible that you know because according to her, Jesus faked his death like Juliet. You would think that one of the two people who first found Jesus alive might be the authority on the matter.

Now, the book probably took a lot of liberties to tell the story. But who is to say history has not taken their own liberties?





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I have a hard time giving a Christian book a bad review, so to be honest up front, that's one of the reasons why this book is rated 3 stars, not 2.

I picked this book up to read at the library, because I enjoy reading fiction books about Biblical women (the Red Tent immediately comes to mind). I've never read a book by this author, & I was intrigued to read a book from a Jewish prospective - one that is slightly different from the Christian framepoint I was raised with.

I enjoyed the book until about the halfway point, when I started to get frustrated with how slowly the book was progressing & how far fetched Miriam's life was. Yes, it's fiction, so there is some poetic license here, but I just can't believe she really did & said half the stuff she was portrayed to have done (but it made for interesting reading, so that's OK). But I kept reading, because I was enjoying the reading - but now we're three quarters into the book, & she still hasn't gotten pregnant, you know, the part she's most famous for. All of a sudden, a few pages from the end, she announces she's pregnant & then she conveniently marries a man she knows, Yosef. And then the last chapter, the bit at the end -- well, let's just say it goes pretty much against what I was raised to believe. I don't know much about the Jewish faith, only the basics, so perhaps this section would make more sense to someone with more similar beliefs to the author.

I do give the book 3 stars, however, because I did enjoy the book, just didn't love it, the book was well written, & it gets points because of the interesting twists & turns the book takes. ( )

I really didn't like this.

nom de Marie, mère de Jésus, celle qui engendra le plus grand bouleversement spirituel depuis la naissance du monothéisme ? Pourtant, ce que nous en disent les Évangiles se résume à quelques versets elliptiques et mystérieux. Durant les années nécessaires à la rédaction de ce roman, dressant le portrait de «ma Marie», je me suis efforcé d'imaginer qui avait pu être cette Miryem de Nazareth, née en Galilée dans le chaotique royaume d'Israël en butte à l'occupation romaine. Quels liens entretenait-elle avec la résistance et l'un de ses chefs les plus populaires, Barabbas ? Quels rapports avait-elle avec les esséniens de Damas, la secte des thérapeutes ? Et avec son lointain cousin Jean le Baptiste ? Né en Pologne, où le culte de Marie domine l'Église catholique, j'ai été depuis mon enfance fasciné par le destin de cette jeune juive à l'origine du christianisme. Un jour il fallait bien que je parte à sa recherche. Aujourd'hui, j'aimerais partager cette histoire passionnante avec vous. ( )

I enjoy historical and Biblical fiction and no one writes this genre better than Marek Halter. He truly captures the forgotten females of that time and brings them to life for us. In this novel, his attention is turned to Mary. Mary springs to life as an intelligent, independent, and deeply caring girl. As she matures and we see that she is truly holy, we believe he has captured the essence of what this young woman would have been. Then, Halter takes us one step further so we can feel what Mary's life as the mother of Christ was like. She is not a timid, shy mother - but more a mother that women today can identify with. Although his ending is not what we have come to believe over the years, it is nonetheless in keeping with the personality he develops for his Mary of Nazareth. ( )