Judea, two thousand years ago: it is the first new moon of spring. Several travelers have gathered at a group of remote desert caves: an aged Jew stricken by cancer, a wild desert dweller, a handsome blond man searching for enlightenment, and a childless woman who longs for a baby. The final, and most mysterious, pilgrim is a young Galilean named Jesus who hopes, perhaps alone among them, to come face-to-face with god.

Crace’s compelling rendition of the forty-day “quarantine” is a first-rate work of literature, a repository of poetry, powerful images, and gritty realism. Furthermore, it is also a bold philosophical statement, an unconventional and sometimes shocking recasting of the nebulous, rumor-shrouded events that have molded and influenced much of the world’s character and history for the past two thousand years.