With powerful resonances for today, the story of Mariam takes us into the turbulent world of rebellious Galilee under Roman occupation, and the courageous lives that changed the course of history.

Mariam’s family in Roman Gaul knows her only as a refugee from far-off Judah, without relatives or friends. For more than thirty years Mariam has turned her back on the past, but now a series of events forces her to confront it. In her final illness, that past begins to haunt her, as she looks back on a youth and early adulthood amongst a people who refused to accept the yoke of the Empire.

Born in the north of Judah, in a land troubled by repression and outbreaks of violence, Mariam grows up in a hard-working peasant community, mutinous, impatient, unwilling to accept the traditional role of women in her society. Running away from home¾against all conventions and propriety¾to follow her charismatic brother Yeshûa and his closest friend Yehûdâ, Mariam shares in the excitement, the fear and the mystery, but at the last witnesses the apparent betrayal of the one and the tragic and brutal death of the other.

“Breathtakingly good…I can’t get it out of my mind.” Online Review