The Power and Fragility of Memory
A Review of
The Gospel of Salome
Kaethe Schwehn
Wildhouse Publishing, 2025
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Reviewed by Elliott May
I am usually skeptical of fiction set in the world of the Bible. I’m not uninterested in the genre; rather, it has been my experience that works of biblical fiction are either overly didactic or overly provocative, more concerned with using the scenery of scripture to make a point than with telling a story and creating a world worth lingering in.
So it was with some uncertainty that I sat down to read Kaethe Schwehn’s The Gospel of Salome. I needn’t have worried. Schwehn has created a stimulating, immersive, lyrical story that will stay with me for a long time.
The tale unfolds along two storylines. The primary one takes place in the year 38 CE in Alexandria, Egypt during a time of simmering political tensions. Salome, an aging physician with a mysterious past, is busily plying her trade while trying to ignore signs of encroaching dementia, when an earnest Jewish man named John Mark arrives from Jerusalem. John Mark, ostensibly in Alexandria to spread the word of Yeshua (Jesus) in the city’s synagogues, is also searching for the mysterious Salome, who is said to have known Jesus. Though John Mark is an enthusiastic follower of the nascent Christian movement, he is plagued by lingering questions, and he struggles to articulate Yeshua’s message with confidence. In searching for Salome, John Mark hopes to put his uncertainty to rest.
The shock for John Mark comes—and I’m not spoiling anything here that isn’t already described on the back cover of the book—when Salome bluntly claims to be Yeshua’s mother. Thus begins a gradual unspooling of Salome’s own story and her memories of Yeshua, which she instructs John Mark to write down as she relays them in fits and starts. Meanwhile, relations are deteriorating between the local Jewish community and the predominant Greek populace. The Roman prefect, Flaccus, has declared the Jews to be aliens and quarantined them to a particular corner of the city. Salome and John Mark, working to alleviate the plight of the Jewish people, are caught up in the escalating tensions in a dramatic way.
Structurally, The Gospel of Salome is ambitious; it alternates between an omniscient third-person narrator in the Alexandrian storyline and Salome’s own voice, as she gradually tells the story of her life and her relationships with Yeshua, Mary, and Joseph. The action also skips around between times and places; along with Alexandria, readers visit Rome, Nazareth, and the Greek countryside, meeting an eclectic array of figures from history, the gospel narratives, and Schwehn’s own imagination. It is a richly atmospheric novel; the world Schwehn has created feels textured and lived-in, alive with the sights, sounds, and smells of the first century. Readers will also be present at some of the most pivotal points of Yeshua’s life. That alone makes for invigorating reading. It is fascinating to imagine Jesus’s childhood: his friends, his daily chores, his family meals. Schwehn brings these experiences to life.
This book is an achievement, for several reasons. The prose is artful, the characters are compelling, and the plot is propulsive. But on a deeper level, it succeeds as an exploration of memory, vocation, and religious experience. At its heart, this book is about the power and fragility of memory, and in particular, how experiences are remembered, interpreted, and retold to others. These questions are of fundamental importance to how Salome, John Mark, and others remember and interpret Jesus.
A few cautionary notes. There are vivid depictions of violence and some sexual encounters here. But most importantly, if you are put off by an imaginative rendering of Jesus’s life and ministry that differs from the gospel accounts, this book may be a difficult read. Readers should remember that the novel is as much concerned with Salome’s reckoning with her past as with John Mark’s understanding of Jesus.
And yet, despite (or perhaps because of) these departures, I found the book engaging. It is a well-crafted novel that purposefully resists easy answers about memory and meaning. That restraint is part of its strength. For readers willing to sit with ambiguity, this is a deeply rewarding book, whether or not you arrive at the same conclusions about Jesus as Salome and John Mark.
Elliott May
Elliott May is the Children, Youth, and Young Adult Minister at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Brookline, Massachusetts. Elliott is also postulant for priest in the Episcopal Church, and he holds graduate degrees in theology from Princeton Theological Seminary and Boston University. Elliott lives near Boston with his wife and their two young children.
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