The centurion's wife

Leah is a young Jewess of mixed heritage living in first-century Palestine, a Roman backwater. She serves the wife of the Roman governor, and her life is already unsettled when an obscure rabbi is executed and his body goes missing. The affair stirs up rival political interests, and Leah is caught between them while carrying a private trauma of her own.

Her family is arranging a marriage to Alban, a Roman soldier who commands the garrison near Galilee. He appears to care only about his own advancement. The governor has ordered him to find the truth behind rumors that a political execution has gone wrong.

The governor's wife has her own interest in the matter. She secretly asks Leah to find out what has become of the dead man, whose missing body is causing such uproar. Leah must therefore investigate while facing a marriage she did not choose.

This is historical fiction with a religious setting, written as a large-scale drama around the birth of Christianity and told from a woman's point of view. An unlikely romance runs through it, alongside danger and betrayal from unexpected quarters. Loyalties are tested between Leah and Alban, who cannot voice what they are searching for, between their irreconcilable heritages, and between their humanity and the Divine they long to meet.