THE GOSPEL OF SALOME is a retelling of Biblical events set against the roiling backdrop of history’s first recorded pogrom, an examination of ideology and motherhood, and a poignant argument for love and equality in today’s world as well as its own context.

In 38 CE Alexandria, Salome, a skilled physician with a past she’s taken lengths to suppress, struggles to navigate the complex landscape of first-century womanhood and the rapid progression of dementia threatening both her memory and medical practice. 

John Mark, a new follower of the fledgling Christian movement, has been sent to preach the hope of Yeshua’s message in Alexandria’s synagogues. What he finds, however, is an oppressed and desperate people perhaps more in need of immediate help than eternal salvation: the Roman prefect Flaccus has labeled the Jewish population as alien, quarantining them away from the city’s daily life and consigning them to crushing poverty. 

As popular disdain for the Jewish people reaches a dangerous boiling point, John Mark turns to Salome for answers. Her story, which moves from the Greek countryside to the Roman Forum to the dusty hills of Nazareth, begins with a simple statement about Yeshua that threatens to change the characters and their world: “He was my son.”

PRAISE

“Sometimes you begin reading a novel and start to recognize it as the exact book you always wished someone would write. THE GOSPEL OF SALOME instantly rang all those bells for me, giving us full, complicated, flawed people who also happen to be central characters of the gospels. In just-barely-CE Alexandria, Salome -- a fierce survivor and healer -- begins to tell the story of how she gave up her infant son, a boy named Yeshua, to a couple from Nazareth. From there the mess of humanity rolls on. Brilliantly written on all levels (psychological, dramatic, lyrical), this is a phenomenal novel.”  --Rebecca Makkai, author of The Great Believers