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
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
For devoted Hannah fans in search of a good cry.
The miseries of the Depression and Dust Bowl years shape the destiny of a Texas family.
“Hope is a coin I carry: an American penny, given to me by a man I came to love. There were times in my journey when I felt as if that penny and the hope it represented were the only things that kept me going.” We meet Elsa Wolcott in Dalhart, Texas, in 1921, on the eve of her 25th birthday, and wind up with her in California in 1936 in a saga of almost unrelieved woe. Despised by her shallow parents and sisters for being sickly and unattractive—“too tall, too thin, too pale, too unsure of herself”—Elsa escapes their cruelty when a single night of abandon leads to pregnancy and forced marriage to the son of Italian immigrant farmers. Though she finds some joy working the land, tending the animals, and learning her way around Mama Rose's kitchen, her marriage is never happy, the pleasures of early motherhood are brief, and soon the disastrous droughts of the 1930s drive all the farmers of the area to despair and starvation. Elsa's search for a better life for her children takes them out west to California, where things turn out to be even worse. While she never overcomes her low self-esteem about her looks, Elsa displays an iron core of character and courage as she faces dust storms, floods, hunger riots, homelessness, poverty, the misery of migrant labor, bigotry, union busting, violent goons, and more. The pedantic aims of the novel are hard to ignore as Hannah embodies her history lesson in what feels like a series of sepia-toned postcards depicting melodramatic scenes and clichéd emotions.
For devoted Hannah fans in search of a good cry.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-2501-7860-2
Page Count: 464
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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