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Why I wrote “The Day After His Crucifixion.”

In researching the culture and traditions of first century Palestinian Jews, I was deeply dismayed by the attitudes regarding girls and women.

They were considered inferior.   Because it was assumed that education was wasted on girls, most women were illiterate.

Women were seen as unreliable or incompetent witnesses and could not testify in court, even in cases that involved themselves.

And there were strict rules regarding interactions of men and women. Women were to be shunned or ignored in public. Men were specifically prohibited from speaking to women in public.

There is even a prayer that men traditionally offered which included the sentence, “Thank you, God, that I am not a Gentile, a woman, or a slave.”

Hobbled by such assumptions, can you imagine how women and girls must have thought or felt about themselves?

And yet, Jesus, something like a rock star with huge crowds following wherever he went, totally ignored the rules. He freely interacted with women, taught them, and welcomed them as his followers.

What must it have been like to have him, a famous prophet and teacher, gaze at them with respect rather than ridicule, listen to them, teach them as he taught his  male disciples?

A woman was the first to whom Jesus confided that he was the Messiah. And a woman was the first to see him after his resurrection.  Despite the fact that women’s testimony was considered invalid, he chose a woman to bear witness to the greatest event of his earthly life — his resurrection.

Considering such a patriarchal society, it is astonishing that within the gospels there is no preaching on the status of women.  Yet there are several stories of Jesus’ public encounters with them.

Encounters in which he treats them with dignity, concern, and compassion. He relates to women as human beings rather than sexual objects.  He is interested in them as persons.

The more I researched the amazing interactions of Jesus and women, the more I knew I had to write about them.

I decided to introduce Jesus through his experiences with women.  There would be no religious jargon in my book.  I wouldn’t even use the name “Jesus,” but rather his birth name, the name by which everyone in his life knew him — Yeshua.

My book would not be a theological study.  It would be a collection of stories. Women’s stories.

Where to start?  Well, nothing draws friends and colleagues together to talk and remember, to laugh and cry, like the death of someone they love.

So I started with Yeshua’s crucifixion, and let the women take it from there.

Interview with the Author

• What literary pilgrimages have you gone on?

This is probably one of the most interesting questions I’ve been asked. I’m not sure that I’ve ever gone on an official literary pilgrimage, but over the years I’ve visited many authors’ homes and been inspired not only by their written works, but by the way they lived, the spaces they inhabited.  When a teenager, my family visited the home of children’s author Laura Ingalls Wilder in Mansfield, Missouri. That home was a farm where Laura and Almanzo lived. We saw the house Almanzo built, the

desk where Laura wrote her newspaper columns, the fiddle Pa played, the organ Mary played. It was amazing to see the things we’d read about in the Little House books.

Later in life, I visited the London home of Charles Dickens and was able to see some of his hand-written manuscripts.

When I lived in California, I often visited Monterey and nearby Salinas. That’s where Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck grew up. I actually had lunch more than once in his childhood home (which had been turned into a sweet little café).

My husband and I visited Ernest Hemingway’s home in Key West. Hemingway was also a Nobel Prize winner. Like me, he loved cats, and we got to see many of the cats that are descendents from his favorite felines.

My husband and I spent a day at Poet Robinson Jeffers home near Carmel, California. It was built of stone, surrounded by tall trees, a place of changing moods as the sun burst through the clouds, or the wind whipped around the rocks.

When I was editor of the weekly newspaper, Los Altos Town Crier, one of residents of our town was Nobel Prize winner Wallace Stegner.  Every few weeks he’d give us a call and say, “You kids are doing a fine job.” And I and my small staff would be on cloud 9 for a few days.

• What was your hardest scene to write?

The Day After His Crucifixion is my first fiction book, so the entire project was pretty new for me. While I loved the research and the writing, what proved most difficult was keeping the women’s stories short, like they would be if the women were talking to me. And still getting all the emotion and truth in those stories. I spent years puttering away on the manuscript because each woman’s story held so much potential and yet it couldn’t be too lengthy.

• What is your favorite childhood book?

The Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder remain among my favorites.

Another favorite of mine is Treasures of the Snow by Patricia M. St. John. However, I have heard that Treasures of the Snow has been revised and simplified for today’s less capable readers.

• How do you select the names of your characters?

In the case of The Day After His Crucifixion, some of the names were supplied by the Bible itself.  The others came from my research. It appears that many if not most women during that time period and place, were named Mary.  And, in fact, there are two Mary’s in my book – the narrator and Mary the sister of Martha and Lazarus.  But my research helped in choosing names for the other characters.

• What comes first, the plot or the characters?

The plot was already established for me. Jesus’ story, which includes the women’s stories, is dramatic enough, but my responsibility was to take this familiar story and give it fresh life through the voices of the women who were there.

• What do you like to do when you are not writing?

Watch “Bargain Block” on TV.  This is my favorite program because the two fellows who rehab houses turn wrecks into delightful homes for working people with limited budgets. They and their realtor friend Shea transform neighborhoods and improve lives. They seem to really care about people and want to help them enjoy their lives.

My husband and I are baseball fans, so we watch games when we can. We also love to travel and have visited more than 30 countries. We have traveled by plane, cruise ship, train and by car. Sometimes we write about our trips.

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