Edwina M.
If you are a reader who is made uncomfortable by entertaining the possibility that there was more to Jesus' life than what is revealed in the Bible, then this is not the book for you. I'm not one of those people and therefore thoroughly enjoyed this historical novel. It is well-written and meticulously researched, and the characters are layered and believable. The novel focuses mostly, though not exclusively, with the years during the life if Jesus that the Bible leaves blank and deals with his life as a human being. Given the cultural expectations for a Jewish man of the time, I find it no stretch at all to believe that he was married, and the emphasis on celibacy after a couple of hundred years in the early church explain why a wife was not mentioned in the gospels.