The Wild Girl

Award-winning author Michele Roberts presents The Secret Gospel of Mary Magdalene, an original novel about the discovery of a fifth gospel: Mary Magdalene's testimony of Jesus' teachings and her own relationship with him. A dramatic vision of Christianity in which men's and women's spirituality are equally celebrated, The Secret Gospel of Mary Magdalene is a passionate and moving chronicle of human faith that endures despite suffering and loss. An emotionally moving tale affirming Mary Magdalene's crucial role in the birth of Christianity.

...isn't it time for "The Wild Girl" to come back in print, and to find a U.S. publisher?

In the list of my three favorite books (together with Jean Liedloff: "The Continuum Concept" and John Welwood: "Journey of the Heart"), this one comes first. It is the lost fifth gospel. The wild girl is Mary Magdalene, and she describes her tantric love relationship with Jesus. It is all about the union of the inner man and the inner woman in the inner marriage chamber of the heart. Resurrection and eternal life are not following cruzifixion and physical death, but they are following love and spiritual union, that may also be reflected in physical union. This is the female point of view of Mary Magdalene, in opposite to the male point of view of Simon Petrus. Really great stuff! The story is very touching. It gives no easy solutions. But it shows a clear direction.

For those who were raised studying the four Gospels, this book offers a plausible and delicious alternative. The story of the life of Jesus told by the woman who first saw the miracle of the resurrection. Beautifully written (as one has come to expect from Roberts) and neatly wound together. I have lent this book out to many friends, and no one has ever returned it to me disappointed.

How will words justify the rights and wrongs of a life that lives for both sexual love and spiritual love, where sexual love is not just at the debased level of mere lust, but an entry point into greater experiences of understanding the power of love in a restless individual's life. The lady in the story is or suppose to be a person in history. This story promises to be provocative in the sense of the bigger ideas it challenges and tests - against the average man in town, or conventional reader. The story is set in a time between 0 and 1st century AD.