The Encounters of Quintas Livius

Quintas Livius, a Roman tax clerk, finds himself a hunted man after filing an investigative report on a rash of disturbances in Galilee surrounding a supposed miracle worker named Jesus. In the wake of Jesus’s crucifixion, the authorities in Jerusalem must squelch a brewing rebellion over what has come to be seen as a rushed execution of a genuine prophet. Because of his report, which had been submitted prior to Jesus’s trial, Quin becomes a prime object of that post-crucifixion cover-up.

During his investigation, Quin had unknowingly become entangled in an anti-Jesus conspiracy—an entanglement severed only after Quin got thrown together with a group of Jesus followers and an itinerant merchant trying to make money off those followers. Among the people Quin meets are a man who worked at a wedding feast in Cana and a young girl who carries a rope she said was used to lower a man through a roof to be healed by Jesus.

The report Quin eventually submits will subject him to the wrath of a ruling establishment seeking to eliminate any evidence that it might have known the truth of Jesus before condemning him. But as he flees for his safety, Quin encounters the risen Jesus and learns the truth behind all the strange circumstances he investigated.

Patrick Garry is a law professor at the University of South Dakota and the author of thirteen nonfiction books and eight novels, which have received more than five dozen book awards.