The Latecomers

by E.M. Nathanson

The Valley of His Passion Park is a Biblical fantasyland in the desert near Los Angeles. Among its features are a daily Passion Play and modern replicas of Sodom and Gomorrah. But one morning its creators find an unplanned addition to their newly constructed a human body crucified on Christ's cross. "The Latecomers" evokes the spiral of crises and confrontations that led to the place of crucifixion and its aftermath. The space between the knowable and the fantastic blurs as the inevitable questions arise. Who is on the cross? Who put him there? Why? Some of the vivid characters through whom the roiling plot is lived Rev. Flodur X Genius, fool or megalomaniac? Creator of The Valley of His Passion Park, Inc. (along with powerful local real estate interests and the proprietor of a Las Vegas casino). his young wife - a strange, beautiful girl whose past and present blur into nightmare, who cannot tell real from imagined. Nicholas sexton, handyman, adviser, disciple - formerly a priest, disillusioned, searching desperately for something or someone to believe in. Jesse the man on the cross. By the manner of his dying, his life had to be remembered and probed, his gospels studied, derided, feared. Lester the sheriff's lieutenant in charge of investigating what happened; an aggressive cop looking for what's in it for him. Lulu, Gert, Fannie Mae and a rootless, mindless, savage gang out for loot and kicks, swept up in events beyond anything they had expected. Logan a newspaperman who finds in the crucifixion a complex, fearful story, and an irresistible fascination.

Paperback

First published January 1, 1972

About the author

Nathanson was born in 1928 in The Bronx. His mother suffered from depression and went into an institution when he was two years old. He was placed in a Jewish orphanage in Manhattan and lived there until he was seven, when he was sent to the Hebrew National Orphan Home in Yonkers. He remained there until he graduated high school.

Nathanson majored in anthropology at New York University. Nathanson held a variety of writing and editing jobs. He was a copy editor for Fairchild Publications in New York, a reporter for the Arlington Sun in Virginia, a stringer for The Washington Post and a freelance magazine writer.

By 1959, he was living in Los Angeles, where he worked as associate editor for Daring Detective magazine and an editing job for a chain of pulp magazines.

In 1965, Nathanson wrote the war novel The Dirty Dozen, a story about 12 servicemen, convicted of robbery, murder and rape, who are sent on a suicide mission to blow up a chateau of German generals just before D-Day with the promise of commuted sentences to those who survive.

The novel was inspired by the supposedly true story of World War II criminal soldiers who got the nickname "the Dirty Dozen" (or "Filthy Thirteen") for their refusal to bathe and who were said to have been sent off on a similar mission. Nathanson heard the story from his producer friend Russ Meyer, who said he learned of the tale while working as a combat photographer during World War II.

Although Nathanson researched in vain for two years to verify the story's accuracy, he still received a contract for a book. He and his editor fictionalized the story. The best-selling novel sold more than two million copies was translated into 10 languages and made into a hit movie in 1967 starring Lee Marvin, Charles Bronson, Jim Brown and Donald Sutherland.

Nathanson died on April 5, 2016, of heart failure in his Laguna Niguel, California home. He was 88.