Selected Reviews from Amazon.com
Carol McKay’s Blood and Silk is much more than its title suggests. It transcends a love story and emerges as an incredibly detailed cultural restoration. With an artist’s eye, McKay has taken painstaking effort to recreate a cultural window that has been lost for millennia. As if refurbishing a lost and treasured painting, McKay applies her poetic gift for description to a vast body of research in order to transport readers to a tumultuous time of economic, religious and social upheaval.
Instead of focusing on Jesus’ well-documented life, the novel strives to peel back the shroud of mystery from the much more mysterious and often overlooked Mary of Magdala. Told from her perspective, the historical novel begins with Mary traveling discreetly in her later years with a small group of trusted friends and her daughter Sarah. They travel to the Lughnasa Summer celebration in Arelate where she disrupts a lewd and mocking recreation of Jesus’ crucifixion thus betraying her cover. After this she is forced to go into hiding in a cave in the woods of Southern Gaul. This is where the story begins to drift into a remembrance of her life.
Using nostalgia as a filter, the novel drifts from lush descriptions of rooms, landscapes, and cities to scenes of brutality. It follows the major events of Mary’s life, from her birth in Magdala to her time at the Villa of the Twin Fish in the Decapolis to her education at the prestigious Cleopatra Lyceum in Gadara to her time at the Essene fortress monastery Khirbet Qumran to her secret wedding ceremony with Jesus at Carmel Mountain to Jesus’ miracles and crucifixion. Although at some parts the novel becomes bogged down by names of places and people, reading like a stern history lesson, McKay generally does a seamless job of integrating history into the narrative.
Interspersed with the events of Mary’s life are smaller chapters about various cultural phenomena such as a description of catoptrics and health care. Anecdotes about the Boar’s Head Legion give a sense of the era’s brutality, and provide the reader with cultural perspective.
The narrative is tempered by McKay’s unique artistic vision. For instance, recurring episodes of nightmarish visions plague Mary’s young life. This imbues the novel with a shroud of mystery and mysticism that evokes curiosity. At some points, however, dream-like descriptions become muddled and interfere with a clear understanding of plot. Certain wistful passages create a disjointedness that can detach instead of connect the reader from the flow of the plot and its characters.
Above all, Blood and Silk is a story told with reverence. McKay’s pensive style combines with her strong and extensive research to immerse the reader in a completely unique take on a much-studied era. McKay’s lofty endeavor pays off in a novel both incredibly personal and enormous in scope.
-Timothy Cushing
Jesus may have been divine, but he was also a man. “Blood and Silk: The Hidden Love Story of Mary of Magdala and Jesus of Nazareth” looks at the human side of Christ, who embraced Mary Magdalene as more than a simple following of his preachings. Reflecting on the times of their lives and drawing much upon research of the era, “Blood and Silk” is a fascinating and riveting read, recommended.
-Midwest Book Reviews
From the opening sentence to the very last word, this is a totally compelling book. Mary Magdalene’s first-person account of her tumultuous life and her soulful, heartrending love affair with Jesus of Nazareth keeps the reader on the edge of the seat, and combined with a richly written narrative and deeply researched cultural details, McKay really hits a home run. The political climate with all its characters, the savory descriptions of the foods they ate, the clothing they wore, the loves and affiliations they feared and celebrated come together to create a fascinating, delicious reading experience. I’m really thrilled about this book!
-Alden Veneklasen
Blood and Silk is an amazing journey. Not only does this scholarly work take you back two thousand years to the Mediterranean region from Egypt to Judea and on to France, it paints a picture of life in those times that is both remarkable and believable. In over forty years of regular church attendance I never got as true a picture of many of the people and places in the New Testament as McKay portrays in her book. Told from the point of view of Mary Magdalene, a very credible case is made for her having been the wife of Jesus of Nazareth. The story of their love is beautifully told. Those open-minded enough to see their lives in a new way will find it very compelling. The book touched me on a deep emotional level. I will be buying copies for friends, not lending mine for I can’t part with it.
-Anonymous
I am SO EXCITED about this book! Besides being an amazing storyteller, Carol provides a first-person account that puts the reader RIGHT THERE in the story. She provides, IMHO, excellent environmental and cultural data that supports the reader’s imagination in creating vivid pictures of each scene. This is the first account of the relationship between Mary and Jesus that I have read that gives Mary’s side of the story. This story is so alive!
-David Lagrone
The Story of Mary Magdalene