'First, let it be said that I did not attend his crucifixion,' Pilate's wife begins. She's also a distant member of the emperor's family, which during this period - the reign of Tiberius and his fiendish mother - is more of a death sentence than an honor.

May imagines her as a young woman named Claudia, whose father serves a powerful commander of the Roman army. She's fleshed out a few scraps of Coptic legend to create a breathy romance about Pilate's wife. The psychic wife of a Roman governor tries to stop the crucifixion of Jesus? Sounds like a plot that would make Dan Brown fall to his knees and cry 'Hallelujah!' It's the inspiration for biographer Antoinette May's first novel. Then the Gospel of Matthew adds this tantalizing detail: 'When he was set down on the judgment seat, his wife sent unto him, saying, Have thou nothing to do with that just man: for I have suffered many things this day in a dream because of him.' The leaders of the Temple have accused him of treason and want him crucified, but Pilate is wavering. She appears in just a single verse of the Bible, but it's a riveting inflection point, a moment that dares us to imagine that events might go either way: Jesus stands before Pontius Pilate. Though no Pulitzer Prize winner, overall, Pilate’s Wife was an entertaining, fast-paced read with great historical drama. Even though it’s fiction, I found it refreshing to be reminded how Judaism as well as Jesus and his followers (among other ‘zealots’) might have been perceived by the Romans at the time. Jesus, Mary, and Mary Magdalene don’t appear as characters until towards the end of the book.

But be warned, just like the HBO series, this book does not hold back when it comes to the brutal entertainment choices and sexual preferences of Romans at the time. If you loved the HBO series Rome, you will enjoy this book. Most of the book centers on Claudia and her (almost always) devastating experiences of the political intrigues of Roman imperial life. Claudia travels with her family and then with her husband all across the Roman empire, and I appreciated May’s detailed descriptions of Antioch, Alexandria, Rome, and Jerusalem among other locales. The book follows the life and tragedies of Claudia, the wife of Pontius Pilate.

I love historical fiction about ancient Rome, and this book lived up to my expectations. I didn’t get to this book when I picked it up at the beach in May, so I saved it for a fun read after my statistics exam.

Pilate's Wife by Antoinette May