About the Book
Author: Merikay McLeod
Genre: Christian Fiction, Christian Women’s Fiction, Biblical Novella
Release Date: April 7, 2025
Women who followed Yeshua the Nazarene gather the day after his crucifixion to comfort one another with personal, heart-felt stories of how the Promised One changed their lives forever.
Eavesdrop on their inspiring conversations and learn behind-the-scenes details of Yeshua’s baptism, the Cana wedding feast, and other New Testament events, and discover afresh the power of His love.
Click here to get your copy!
My Review
This is a great novella. We are familiar with reading the crucifixion and resurrection accounts from the male perspective. This novella gives the many women involved a voice of their own. McLeod incorporates biblical accounts with her imaginative take on what some of the women might have experienced and felt. We really get a clear sense of the expectations for what the Messiah would do and then the ache and questions after the crucifixion.
Two of the women's stories really stood out to me. One was that of the woman caught in adultery. Wow. McLeod's imaginative backstory really puts a different take on that biblical event. Another woman's story of great impact was that of the mother of the boy with the few loaves of bread and fish from which Jesus fed thousands. McLeod imagines her thoughts kneading the bread, preparing food for her family. That her common labor for her family would be used by Jesus was just an amazing story.
I highly recommend this novella. It highlights how Jesus treated women, respecting them, never ignoring them and never turning them away. The Author's Note at the end is a good resource for identifying the Scriptures upon which McLeod's stories are based. There are also questions for deeper study so this novella would make a good personal or group study. It provides a new take on familiar stories yielding insights I never would have seen on my own.
My rating: 5/5 stars.
About the Author
More from Merikay
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.
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(My star ratings: 5-I love it, 4-I like it, 3-It's OK, 2-I don't like it, 1-I hate it.)
6 comments:
Sounds enthralling
Sounds like a great book.
This sounds really good! Sure is a different perspective on Jesus.
This looks like a great read. Thanks for sharing.
What is your favorite space to do your writing?
Thank you so much for the articulate review of The Day After His Crucifixion! It was clear and easy to understand and was just what I needed to decide to check it out!
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