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The Gospel of Salome
It is 38 CE in Alexandria, and Salome, a skilled physician with a past she's fought to suppress, struggles to navigate the complex landscape of first-century womanhood, the privilege of being Greek, and the rapid progression of dementia threatening both her memory and medical practice.
John Mark, a new follower of the fledgling Christian movement, has been sent to preach the hope of Yeshua's message in Alexandria's synagogues. What he finds, however, is an oppressed and desperate people perhaps more in need of immediate help than eternal salvation: the Roman prefect Flaccus has labeled the Jewish population as alien, quarantining them away from the city's daily life and consigning them to crushing poverty.
Falling flat in his preaching and plagued with his own doubts about the more miraculous details of Yeshua's story, John Mark turns to Salome, who is rumored to have witnessed the better part of Yeshua's life, for definitive answers. As time threatens to rob her of her story altogether, Salome must at last contend with its meaning in the retelling, and as popular disdain for the Jewish people reaches a dangerous boiling point, John Mark is faced with the radical, paradigm-shifting implications of Salome's claim about Yeshua: "He was my son."
Moving from the Greek countryside to the Roman Forum, from the dusty hills of Nazareth to the wide boulevards of Alexandria, THE GOSPEL OF SALOME is a retelling of Biblical events set against the roiling backdrop of history's first recorded pogrom, an examination of ideology and motherhood, and a poignant argument for love and equality in today's world as well as its own context.
John Mark, a new follower of the fledgling Christian movement, has been sent to preach the hope of Yeshua's message in Alexandria's synagogues. What he finds, however, is an oppressed and desperate people perhaps more in need of immediate help than eternal salvation: the Roman prefect Flaccus has labeled the Jewish population as alien, quarantining them away from the city's daily life and consigning them to crushing poverty.
Falling flat in his preaching and plagued with his own doubts about the more miraculous details of Yeshua's story, John Mark turns to Salome, who is rumored to have witnessed the better part of Yeshua's life, for definitive answers. As time threatens to rob her of her story altogether, Salome must at last contend with its meaning in the retelling, and as popular disdain for the Jewish people reaches a dangerous boiling point, John Mark is faced with the radical, paradigm-shifting implications of Salome's claim about Yeshua: "He was my son."
Moving from the Greek countryside to the Roman Forum, from the dusty hills of Nazareth to the wide boulevards of Alexandria, THE GOSPEL OF SALOME is a retelling of Biblical events set against the roiling backdrop of history's first recorded pogrom, an examination of ideology and motherhood, and a poignant argument for love and equality in today's world as well as its own context.
330 pages, Paperback
Published October 15, 2025
About the author
Kaethe Schwehn
5 books50 followersKaethe Schwehn holds a B.A. from Gustavus Adolphus College and an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her memoir, Tailings, won the Minnesota Book Award for creative nonfiction in 2015 and her debut novel, The Rending and the Nest, will be published by Bloomsbury in February of 2018. She has been the recipient of a Minnesota State Arts Board grant and a Loft Mentor Series award. Her fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in numerous journals. She teaches at Saint Olaf College and lives in Northfield, Minnesota.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
August 8, 2025
ARC Review
"Time is a Psalm exhaled from the mouths of the living into the mouths of the dying"
Wonderfully written, eloquent, and lyrical. I could almost get lost on the beauty of it all and forget the horrors and tragedies of the time as they unfolded on the pages. The storyline is engrossing and engaging. It's hard to put down and even harder to forget. I found myself still thinking about the plot and plight of the people long after I should have been sleeping.
This was a very difficult book for me to read. Upon reflection, I decided that I just could not bring myself to give it a star rating. Everything about this book is perfect. From the writing, world building, descriptiveness, and character arcs to the research done and historical accuracy of CE/AD. It's easily a 5-star read and maybe one of the best writings of the year.
Unless* you are a biblical follower.
The hardest parts of reading this for me personally were being asked to suspend my belief. Being asked to put aside my doctrine and look at things from a non believers point of view.
This book gives a brand new spin on an old tale. Transforming not just the birth, death, and resurrection of Christ but also the details in-between.
With medicine, not miracles, Yeshua healed the sick and suffering. This statement sums up the baseline of the story.
A young Greek woman (Salome) gives birth to Yeshua (Jesus) and gives him to Mari (Mary) and Josef (Joseph) to raise. There is no virgin birth. Mary is not the strong, blessed mother of the savior. She is a devout woman prone to fits of melancholy who bestows the words of her people on her adopted son.
Salome is a female physician who teaches her "son" the ways of medicine. His miracles are more doctoring than devine. Yeshua doesn't raise from the dead after three days. He just wasn't actually deceased when they took him off the cross, and Salome was able to heal him. (The book doesn't mention what happens after he was found alive. It stops there. No assent into heaven is mentioned)
Here, Jesus feeds people crumbs and talks them into believing they were full. Not that he fed 5000 with five fish, and they actually were full. This book takes the last supper and makes it an inside reminder between mother and son NOT a somber devotion with his followers.
The book takes place a few decades after the crucifixion. Salome is an old woman now, still healing the sick, still keeping her secrets. When persecution comes to the Jewish quarters and the people are now labeled aliens and foreigners, she steps up to help. Telling her story to John Mark as they try to protect and help the suffering and downgraded people who are now being persecuted for politics they aren't even aware of yet.
Kaethe Schwehn does a remarkable job of bringing inclusivity and diversity into her writing. Giving Salome a trans "roommate" to share her golden years with.
Asha - "What beauty and terror there was in refusing to be one thing or another"
She gives a voice to women who generally go unheard and unnoticed. Showcasing their strengths when they weren't allowed to rise. She unties the classes through their humanity, bridging the great deviders.
"For the way of the body held a perfect innocence below its skin, a radiance that rendered a body simply a body. Stripped of our skin, we are unrecognizable as slave or master, Roman or Greek. The body argued for and equality I had never thought the world might possess."
"Time is a Psalm exhaled from the mouths of the living into the mouths of the dying"
Wonderfully written, eloquent, and lyrical. I could almost get lost on the beauty of it all and forget the horrors and tragedies of the time as they unfolded on the pages. The storyline is engrossing and engaging. It's hard to put down and even harder to forget. I found myself still thinking about the plot and plight of the people long after I should have been sleeping.
This was a very difficult book for me to read. Upon reflection, I decided that I just could not bring myself to give it a star rating. Everything about this book is perfect. From the writing, world building, descriptiveness, and character arcs to the research done and historical accuracy of CE/AD. It's easily a 5-star read and maybe one of the best writings of the year.
Unless* you are a biblical follower.
The hardest parts of reading this for me personally were being asked to suspend my belief. Being asked to put aside my doctrine and look at things from a non believers point of view.
This book gives a brand new spin on an old tale. Transforming not just the birth, death, and resurrection of Christ but also the details in-between.
With medicine, not miracles, Yeshua healed the sick and suffering. This statement sums up the baseline of the story.
A young Greek woman (Salome) gives birth to Yeshua (Jesus) and gives him to Mari (Mary) and Josef (Joseph) to raise. There is no virgin birth. Mary is not the strong, blessed mother of the savior. She is a devout woman prone to fits of melancholy who bestows the words of her people on her adopted son.
Salome is a female physician who teaches her "son" the ways of medicine. His miracles are more doctoring than devine. Yeshua doesn't raise from the dead after three days. He just wasn't actually deceased when they took him off the cross, and Salome was able to heal him. (The book doesn't mention what happens after he was found alive. It stops there. No assent into heaven is mentioned)
Here, Jesus feeds people crumbs and talks them into believing they were full. Not that he fed 5000 with five fish, and they actually were full. This book takes the last supper and makes it an inside reminder between mother and son NOT a somber devotion with his followers.
The book takes place a few decades after the crucifixion. Salome is an old woman now, still healing the sick, still keeping her secrets. When persecution comes to the Jewish quarters and the people are now labeled aliens and foreigners, she steps up to help. Telling her story to John Mark as they try to protect and help the suffering and downgraded people who are now being persecuted for politics they aren't even aware of yet.
Kaethe Schwehn does a remarkable job of bringing inclusivity and diversity into her writing. Giving Salome a trans "roommate" to share her golden years with.
Asha - "What beauty and terror there was in refusing to be one thing or another"
She gives a voice to women who generally go unheard and unnoticed. Showcasing their strengths when they weren't allowed to rise. She unties the classes through their humanity, bridging the great deviders.
"For the way of the body held a perfect innocence below its skin, a radiance that rendered a body simply a body. Stripped of our skin, we are unrecognizable as slave or master, Roman or Greek. The body argued for and equality I had never thought the world might possess."
October 23, 2025
This is one of those books that when I finish, I go "huh....." and then I can't stop thinking about it for days. I am sure that if I reread this book in 5 years, I would take away a completely different meaning from it. This is a super weird analogy for a book, but it was like a puff pastry where there are so many delicate layers that you can pull apart, and it all comes together for a delicious dessert. (Books and dessert are my thing, I guess). There are so many layers of different themes in this book that I could pull apart and think about separately, or I can just enjoy the book as a whole. Is it about motherhood? Is it about Christianity? Is it just a historical novel? Is it about finding your voice as a woman? Is it about surviving under tyranny? Yes to all of those and more. I loved the author's first novel, "The Rending and the Nest," even more than this one, so I can't wait to see what novel she writes next.
March 24, 2026
I'm biased. I've spent the last 25 years of my life trying to convince other white Christians that Jesus was not European but was Jewish, inside and out. This work of fiction throws that assertion out and gives Jesus European parents. The main point of the book for me was who was Jesus' father. We're told early on who his mother is. Spoiler alert: it's a European woman. I probably should have not finished the book because that threw me for a loop, but I wanted the secret baby daddy revealed. Then once it was, I was furious because his father is also a European. I kept telling myself it's fiction, it's ok, the author can take the story anywhere she wants. It shouldn't matter to me. But making Jesus European matters to me personally. This image, fictional as it is, matters. We have 2000 years of antisemitism to ask forgiveness for and to make restitution for. Late in the book, the author goes to great lengths to assure the reader that the mother is darker skinned with "almost" black hair. Is it good enough for the author to create a Jesus that could pass for a Jew living in Palestine? It's fiction. She can do what she wants. But I hope if she writes another book she'll be more sensitive to sensitive subjects like the non-European image of Jesus we should be publishing far and wide.
The book is dense, lots of arcane detail. While I felt sympathy for the MC, I don't feel like she ever worked her way under my skin and into my heart. I related much more to the ancillary characters: Asha, John Mark, Julia (always on team spoiled princess), Rufus, and Nadjim.
The book is dense, lots of arcane detail. While I felt sympathy for the MC, I don't feel like she ever worked her way under my skin and into my heart. I related much more to the ancillary characters: Asha, John Mark, Julia (always on team spoiled princess), Rufus, and Nadjim.
October 22, 2025
“Home inside a calling…” I highly recommend you join me in experiencing this story written in the gripping and gorgeous prose of Kaethe Schwehn. It is a moving, immersive reimagining of a watershed moment in history and biblical imagination that is too often and easily whitewashed through a carefully curated set of moralistic teachings from its most quoted rabble rousing rabbi. Here there are neither foregone conclusions of resurrection nor armchair meaning making but the grim grind of survival in the tyranny of the moment. With “The Gospel of Salome” we are forcibly reminded that in the first century (under another authoritarian regime) there was horrendous suffering for the most marginalized but also a wellspring of generous and fearless resistance from the most vulnerable people. It is an unutterable gift to be reminded that from the dumpster fire of death dealing tyranny a vocation can be plucked and pursued. Whether as a person of faith or a close reader of current events and the consequences of authoritarianism on real people, “Salome” encourages us, along with Schwehn, to do the vital and faithful work of imagining and dimensionalizing real bodies into the mythic silhouettes of scripture and history.
November 3, 2025
Reading The Gospel of Salome feels like being pulled into an old story I thought I knew, only to discover it is entirely new. The story gives voice to a woman long kept in the margins—Salome, a healer and mother whose life is bound to Yeshua’s—and suddenly the world of the gospels feels full, textured, and individual. The details of life—the medicine, the griefs and joys—make the story deeply real.
What I love most is how personal it feels. This isn’t only a biblical tale; it’s a story about what it means to live with purpose, to love fiercely, to remember and to forget. Salome’s struggles with memory, her devotion to her calling, and her complicated ties to Mari and Josef feel intimately familiar. The book makes the sacred feel human again—and reminds us that faith, healing, and storytelling are all ways of reaching for grace.
As always, Schwehn’s prose is luminous and full of sensory detail, but it never feels ornamental; it feels true—and makes you want to linger over every word.
What I love most is how personal it feels. This isn’t only a biblical tale; it’s a story about what it means to live with purpose, to love fiercely, to remember and to forget. Salome’s struggles with memory, her devotion to her calling, and her complicated ties to Mari and Josef feel intimately familiar. The book makes the sacred feel human again—and reminds us that faith, healing, and storytelling are all ways of reaching for grace.
As always, Schwehn’s prose is luminous and full of sensory detail, but it never feels ornamental; it feels true—and makes you want to linger over every word.
January 9, 2026
The Gospel of Salome is a richly imagined and emotionally resonant work of historical fiction that reclaims voice, agency, and humanity from the margins of recorded history. Kaethe Schwehn crafts Salome as a complex and compelling protagonist a skilled physician navigating womanhood, faith, memory, and survival in first century Alexandria. The novel’s exploration of dementia alongside intellectual and moral authority is handled with sensitivity and depth, grounding the story in lived human experience.
What makes this novel especially powerful is its moral and philosophical ambition. By situating Salome’s story within the brutal realities of political oppression, religious conflict, and history’s first recorded pogrom, Schwehn creates a narrative that feels both ancient and urgently contemporary. The reexamination of belief, motherhood, and equality particularly through Salome’s radical claim about Yeshua invites readers to question inherited narratives and consider love and justice beyond ideology. The Gospel of Salome is bold, compassionate, and deeply thoughtn provoking.
What makes this novel especially powerful is its moral and philosophical ambition. By situating Salome’s story within the brutal realities of political oppression, religious conflict, and history’s first recorded pogrom, Schwehn creates a narrative that feels both ancient and urgently contemporary. The reexamination of belief, motherhood, and equality particularly through Salome’s radical claim about Yeshua invites readers to question inherited narratives and consider love and justice beyond ideology. The Gospel of Salome is bold, compassionate, and deeply thoughtn provoking.
February 11, 2026
Imagine the birth of Jesus in a way you could not have imagined! Schwehn imagines the birth and life of Jesus with heart, drama and twists. As a person of faith, I loved the story and the questions her prose raised: What does it mean to be the "son of God"? How did women in biblical times achieve expert skills? How did they access education? What did it mean to be a resident of a lowly, backwater community? Who is Jesus? I couldn't wait to see where the story went.
December 8, 2025
Such an intriguing read - the entire book I spent wondering what would happen next and how it was all tied together. Fantastic interpretation of history and a historical story many of us have grow up with.
The writing style is creative and intelligent, yet accessible. I highly recommend this book and all the conversation that it will surely inspire!
The writing style is creative and intelligent, yet accessible. I highly recommend this book and all the conversation that it will surely inspire!
October 31, 2025
This book is quite marvelous. A re-telling of the life and death of Jesus through the eyes of Salome, who is his . . . . Never mind. Read the book. It has a modern sensibility but brought to life through a historical lens and a poet's language.
January 10, 2026
This is a courageous retelling of Jesus’ life through the voice of Salome, a fascinating character. Beautifully written, interesting structure. The only qualm I have is with only one narrative choice that I will not talk about. Read the book.
February 9, 2026
Absolutely wonderful writing. But the premise of the narrative involving Jesus? Not so much.
November 5, 2025
This novel is luminous, wrenching, real and surreal, meticulously researching and utterly transporting. In The Gospel of Salome, Schwehn's powerful imagination mixed with her poet's sensibilities to create an absolute must-read.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews