Synopsis of The Saviour

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Short Synopsis of The Saviour

It is 1963, the heady days of the hippies, and a secret group within the ancient corridors of the Catholic Church believe the Second Coming of Christ is already born. Discovering writings predating those of the Kabbalah, they believe the tradition in Jewish mysticism of the conjunction of Venus and Mercury - the Eastern Star, or the Holy Shekinah - announces the great event. This contemporary novel takes place in the dark world of lost and ancient scriptures, many of which have been hidden for centuries by the Catholic Church. It is a race against time, when the One is chased by people with sinister, often murderous, intent, as the unexpected reality of the Parousia is gradually revealed.

However, it is not the Jesus of popular narrative that we see walking upon the Earth. Rather it is a young boy, Jeffrey. Members of a masonic group, P1, have been looking for this new messiah, who, due to physical and mental abuse, has run away from home. Like Jesus, he has a step-parent, but this woman is nothing like the gentle Joseph, Mary’s husband of biblical myth. Jeffrey’s stepmother is a deranged individual, with extreme neurotic tendencies, who has driven away both Jeffrey,and his brother Jamie, from the family home. These experiences have left the young messiah with a complex set of characteristics.

We first see Jeffrey at the age of twelve. Unconsciously chasing his spiritual lineage, he has traveled alone, to the South of France, to Rousillon, near Avignon. Here he meets Juliana, a doctoral student researching sacred architecture at the Sorbonne. Neither of them realizes it immediately, but she is the woman he is destined to love.

The story is narrated by an angel, who is able to manifest in a variety of bodies, in order to guide Jeffrey. The angel’s first appearance is as Roald, a mature grey-haired man, and then later as Tomas Andrew Oscarson, or Tao for short, who is a sixteen-year-old boy. Jeffrey and Tao strike up a friendship when Jeffrey is living rough in the French countryside.

The narrative moves forward in time, to when Jeffrey is twenty-years old, and has become a navigating officer in the merchant navy.

Members of P1 are being murdered by unknown assassins sent by P2 (a factual black Masonic lodge). Here, in the city of Glasgow, a freelance feature writer on religious affairs is trying to meet the young messiah. However, Jeffrey has become interested mainly in drinking, and, in fact, has become an alcoholic.

On trading routes around the Arabian Gulf,and the African coast, matters come to a head in Alexandria when Jeffrey and his young lover are attacked in their hotel room, by henchmen of P2. With P1 members, he escapes south to Oxyrynchus, the place where the Gospel of Thomas was found. The members of P1 think that this lost gospel is none other than Q, the hypothetical source text for the canonical gospels. Then, traveling on to the palace of Osiris, Jeffrey meets an intense spiritualist, Omm Sety (another actual character, who lived and worked at the palace of Sety I.)

In dreams, she tells him to return to France where he will find lost fragments of the Gospel of Mary Magdalene. She instructs him to then travel on, to the stone circles of Kilmartin, in Scotland, to discover the remaining parts of the lost secrets.

From page one, barely pausing for breath, to the end, this is a story of frantic excitement, with undeniable page turning quality, that will amaze, mystify, and enthrall readers. It is a must for lovers of the thriller, as well as the avant garde.