On Living Stone
When readers first meet a 12-year-old Salome in 2 BC, she’s a girl who’s lost her mother and lives with her crippled yet devoted father. In their village, neighbors whisper of a family curse clinging to Salome’s family. Then, a close friend of her mother, Naysa, steps forward to usher Salome across the fragile threshold into womanhood, and in time, she finds love with one of Naysa’s sons.
Being a young mother brings Salome both joy and fractures into her life. After the birth of her second child, a quiet darkness settles over her, a sorrow without a name in Biblical times. Postpartum despair isolates her and puts a strain on her familial relationships. Salome’s struggles are achingly familiar as she slowly learns to hold sorrow and love in the same breath, searching for a way back to Yahweh. Years later, in 27 AD, her youngest son talks excitedly about a new teacher named Jesus, whose name ripples throughout the region. Some people speak of him with wonder but others with suspicion and disdain, including Salome’s brother-in-law.
Through Salome’s gaze, the mother of James and John, Jesus’s ministry is revealed in intimate, human detail. Salome walks beside her sons, witnessing compassion made flesh: grieving mothers comforted, the unclean restored, the sick healed. Yet fear presses close to Salome’s tender hope. She questions what Jesus intends for her sons, who soon become two of the prophet’s closest followers. Salome’s journey from childhood to motherhood is profoundly moving. The tension is palpable as the culmination of Jesus’s ministry throws everything Salome thought into question. The setting arises vividly from the pages. This is a lyrically written odyssey about a mother’s love and the power of faith. Highly recommended.
