Novelist and former pastor Gansky (The Incumbent
) turns to nonfiction, taking readers back to the 40 days Jesus spent on earth after his resurrection. Too few books have treated this important topic; unfortunately, Gansky offers mostly apologetics, and clumsily done apologetics at that. He devotes the first 75 pages not to the doings of the resurrected Jesus, but to rehashing the garden of Gethsemane, the Cross and Mary at the tomb. His main aim seems to be to persuade readers that the events of the New Testament really happened, and to this end, he considers, and tidily dismisses, several "shaky" attempts to explain away the Resurrection. When Gansky does turn to his ostensible subject, he devotes too much space to summarizing, rather than probing the meaning of, familiar biblical stories. His prose is by turns melodramatic ("When Jesus died, her world died with him") and cutesy (as when he refers to the author of the third Gospel, whom Christian tradition describes as a physician, as "Dr. Luke"). One redeeming feature of the book is the attention Gansky gives women; his discussions of Mary Magdalene may capture the imagination of Dan Brown's more evangelical fans. But overall, this is a disappointment. (Feb.)
