The Bastard

BOOK OF THE YEAR 2012, Bronze Medal (ForeWord Reviews)

"He uses solid research to create a wide-ranging vibrant world." - KIRKUS REVIEWS

"This novel has it all - bullies, forbidden romance, friendship, rivalries, brutal battles, gladiators and the triumph of good over evil." - TALLAHASSEE DEMOCRAT

"An intriguing notion of what might have happened." - PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY

"The Bastard" is an action-driven tale of the missing decades in the life of Jesus. The novel realistically portrays a human Jesus as an outcast character caught in a clash of cultures during an age of brutality and violence. In the novel, Jesus escapes his bullied childhood in Nazareth by becoming a stable boy who travels with the Roman cavalry to Germania. He rises to become a mounted medicus and, finally, a gladiator, before rejecting violence and returning to Judea as a healer. The love between Jesus and Mary Magdalene is central to this story of awakening and redemption through the terrible path of hardship and bloodshed.

The novel is controversial, but not gratuitously so. It seriously explores the events that transformed Jesus from a child of the 1st-century Jewish social order, with its Law commanding "Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, fracture for fracture," into a teacher of peace, with unheard-of ideas about forgiveness and non-retaliation. "The Bastard" does not wrestle with the biblical account of the three-year ministry of Jesus. Instead of rehashing what has been proclaimed, it offers a vivid take on all that was left out.

MARK CANTER is the former Senior Editor of Men's Health magazine and author of the novel, Ember from the Sun, published in 10 languages. He is a former adjunct faculty member in the department of religion at Florida State University.