| Summary: | This is a story of Judea at the time of the crucifixion, with a young Roman, sated with excesses of pleasure, in a period of doubt, fear, and searching. Marcus is running away from a love affair with a matron, virtually exiled from Rome. In Alexandria he waited for a year for her to join him. Then, driven by an impulse he does not recognize, he leaves Alexandria for Jerusalem. He writes a succession of long diary letters, not sent, but kept as a record. For as he enters Jerusalem he is met by the sight of the crucifixion, and his life is never the same again. He feels emotional shock, curiosity, and an overwhelming need to know the truth behind the sign above the cross: King of the Jews. Spurned by those who had been closest to Jesus, helped by the women -- Mary Magdalen, Mary and Martha, Mary of Beret, even obliquely by Pontius Pilate's wife, Claudia -- helped too finally by Simon of Cyrene and Zaccheus, who fear contact with the defiled Roman. Marcus, bit by bit and recurrently doubting, finds himself convinced. Jesus had risen and was walking the earth as a man again. Rejected by the disciples, Marcus finds his own answers, his own conviction, and his own way.
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