The Passion of Mary Magdalen: A Novel

by Elizabeth Cunningham

Overview

“Cunningham weaves Hebrew scripture, Celtic and Egyptian mythology, and early Christian legend into a nearly seamless whole, creating an unforgettable fifth gospel story in which the women most involved in Jesus’s ministry are given far more representation.”—Library Journal

“This year’s must-have summer reading.”—KINK Radio

“Lavish and lusty . . . Cunningham’s Celtic Magdalen is as hot in the mouth as Irish whiskey.”—Beliefnet (chosen as one of this year’s “heretical beach-books”)

“Explodes off the page with its tales of love, hope, power, and redemption—book clubs looking for a great discussion, take note.”—TheBookBrothel.com

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780976684336
Publisher:	Monkfish Book Publishing Company
Publication date:	05/01/2007
Series:	The Maeve Chronicles , #1
Pages:	640
Sales rank:	1,023,491
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

Elizabeth Cunningham is the direct descendant of nine generations of Episcopal priests. When she was not in church or school, she read fairytales and fantasy novels or wandered in the enchanted wood of an overgrown, abandoned estate next door to the rectory. Her religious background, the magic of fairytales, and the numinous experience of nature continue to inform her work.

Read an Excerpt

Elizabeth Cunningham is the author of the novels The Return of the Goddess and The Wild Mother. She comes from nine generations of Episcopal priests. Though she managed to avoid becoming an Episcopal priest, she was ordained as an interfaith minister of spiritual counsel in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. She balances writing with a counseling practice.

Editorial Reviews

*Starred Review* Anyone not ensconced in a cave lately has heard the rumor that Mary Magdalene was literally the bride of Christ. The Da Vinci Code (2003) popularized the theory sufficiently to make Magdalene pilgrimages big business in France, where she ostensibly established the French royal family. Magdalene fans are in for more surprises in Cunningham's classy, sexy novel, which embraces the Magdalene's reputation for prostitution to the extent of casting her as a sacred whore serving the goddess Isis. For Cunningham, Mary is Maeve, a big, strapping, redheaded Celt sold into slavery in Rome and bought for her ample charms by a renowned domina (i.e., madam). Cunningham's big book is first an absorbing historical novel about down-and-dirty slave life in Rome and then a visionary fantasy about the Magdalene's life as Jesus' gentile wife. Besides Maeve's endearingly slutty second owner, Paulina, few characters participate in both, but in both are characters well known from other texts; for example, in the first the king of the "golden bough," in the second the Virgin Mary, who, holy though she is, is also quite dotty. Cunningham's wild, breakneck style only cements the suspicion that this will be--besides snapped up by Magdalene fans, Celtophiles, feminists, and lovers of a good yarn--controversial. Those unready for lesbianism and sex with the Redeemer between the same covers may blanch as well as flush.

Booklist

In Daughter of the Shining Isles, her first volume of "The Maeve Chronicles," Cunningham introduced the reader to an unusual sort of Mary Magdalen, a wild Celtic girl named Maeve who fell desperately in love with a young man she called Esus. After preventing Esus's sacrifice in a druidic ritual and sending him back to Israel, Maeve was exiled from her island home, captured by Romans, and sold into slavery. This second volume picks up the story at this point, following Maeve through her time of slavery and her journey with benefactor Joseph of Arimathea to Galilee, where she is reunited with her beloved Esus, now known as Jesus. Though intentional on Cunningham's part, anachronistic references to Las Vegas, coffee klatches, and high fives may leave some readers a bit disoriented. That quibble aside, Cunningham weaves Hebrew scripture, Celtic and Egyptian mythology, and early Christian legend into a nearly seamless whole, creating an unforgettable fifth gospel story in which the women most involved in Jesus's ministry are given far more representation than found in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Recommended for public libraries where there is an interest in Celtic or early church mythologies. [For a more traditional portrait, see Angela Hunt's Magdalene, reviewed in the Christian Fiction column on p. 74; coming in August is Kathleen McGowan's The Expected One (Touchstone Fireside), the first of a trilogy of thrillers about Mary Magdalene.-Ed.]-Jane Henriksen Baird, Anchorage Municipal Libs., AK Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal