An email from Joe Marino and an article in the Twin Cities Star Tribune reminded me that on March 22, this year, I wrote about the new Shroud-based novel by Paul Mohrbacher, The Magic Fault. There has been total silence. I haven’t heard from a single person who has read it. From the Star Tribune:
The book, "The Magic Fault," touches on serious issues, including people’s growing mistrust of religions other than their own. Mohrbacher, who spent 16 years as a Roman Catholic priest before resigning in 1976 to get married, is concerned about what he sees as a growing distrust between Christianity and Islam, a situation often exacerbated by politicians.
"In the book, I use the term ‘the other’ to refer to people we are afraid of because we don’t know anything about them, people who are not a member of our group," he said. "Whenever we get into an election cycle, politicians are going to use that fear to get power."
He didn’t want to write a nonfiction book, because he figured it would be pigeonholed as a tome for theological insiders. He wanted to reach a broader audience.
To do that, "people have to see this as entertaining," he said. "It can pick up the themes, but it has to be fiction."
The plot involves Christian extremists who steal the Shroud of Turin in the belief that if they take it to Jerusalem, it will force the second coming of Jesus Christ and stop Islamists from taking over the world.
The story is set in 2004. That was when Mohrbacher was in Italy and saw the Shroud of Turin.
"I’m big on numbers," he explained. "The shroud was stolen from Constantinople [during the Crusades] in 1204, and I liked the idea of it being stolen again 800 years later."
It is available in Kindle edition for $4.99, so maybe I’ll download a copy and read it. The paperback edition available at Amazon, Barnes and Nobel and several other outlets sells for about $14.00.
Has anyone read it. There isn’t even a review at Amazon.