Excerpt from the first chapter of The Madonna Secret

As we approach Easter and the Summer release of my ecofeminist retelling of the Magdalene’s Story The Madonna Secret, I’m going to share some excerpts from the novel. The book is available for pre-orders and pre-orders really help authors! You can order from any online booksellers here.

Excerpted from Part 1: The Tower

I am too close to see him.

Instead I smell him, cedarwood, and sea salt. Grapes burst underfoot. Musk. The sharp tang of a lightning strike. I grip his muscled arms, press my face into his neck. He sighs into my hair. I feel his breath, hot and insistent, shiver against my scalp. I lick the sweat from his shoulder and his hands curl around my waist.

“Miriam.”

I try to pull back in order to look up into his face and find I cannot. My arms betray me, tightening their clutch, knowing that to release him is to lose him. And he, too, presses me into his broad chest, our lungs paired like twin butterflies, buoyed by wind, flown through with a common spirit.

Ah. I see. You are confused.

You do not understand what I am telling you. I see in your eyes a desire I have come to distrust. You want the teachings. You want to understand how to do extraordinary things. Impossible things. Miracles. Do you think I will teach you how to transform water into wine, wine into blood? Do you think I will teach you how to raise the dead? Do you think I will teach you the secret of eternal life?

            Forget everything you have heard.

            Here is the first teaching.

The teachings do not matter to me anymore. The only thing I care about is whether or not I can tell the story with enough honesty that he returns to me. Maybe then I will see him again as he was. Maybe if I approach carefully, and do not leave anything out, I will again be able to see the face of my beloved.

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