A Wretched Man

Long before ancient temple priests scribed the sagas of Abraham, Isaac, and the patriarchs onto papyrus sheets, campfire stories passed from generation to generation. Storytelling has long been the way we remember our ancestral origins, and this novel of historical fiction remembers the birth of Christianity. Bigger than life characters are remembered as real flesh and blood human beings. Paul's letters to his friends and followers-Romans, Galatians, Philippians-come alive in their historical setting. The novel recreates the food and the flowers, the conflicts and the controversies, the wind and the weather, and the reader is transported back through time into the Biblical narrative. How did the Apostle Paul, who never met Jesus and who was not one of the disciples, become the most important person in the history of Christianity, apart from Jesus? This work of historical fiction explores the life and times of the man from Tarsus. Paul drew adversaries like a moth to a flame: Jews of the synagogue, pagan temple priests, Roman authorities, and James, the brother of Jesus. With each step along countless miles, Paul carried the rejection and disapproval of James in Jerusalem, the brother who inherited the mantle of leadership following the crucifixion of Jesus. Christianity was born of the often contentious relationship between the Apostle Paul, missionary to the Gentiles, and James, the brother of the Lord and leader of the Jesus movement in Jewish Jerusalem. For nearly thirty years after his celebrated conversion on the road to Damascus, the Apostle Paul trudged the highways of the Roman Empire to share his good news with the Gentiles, but always under the skeptical eye of the friends and family of Jesus, his original Jewish followers, who remained in Jerusalem. This novel characterizes Paul as a flesh and blood human with inner passions and emotional turmoil. What was the "thorn in the flesh" that tormented him? Journey with Paul on his pilgrimage. Shiver with him around a mountain campfire, breathe deeply of the aromas wafting through a teeming marketplace, sway with the veiled Temple dancers to the melodies of the harp, savor a tangy goat stew in a tumbledown hut in a nameless hamlet. Along the way, you will witness the birth pangs of Christianity.