This is a book that Anne Rice, of vampire fame, wrote after reconverting to Catholicism. It is the story of Jesus and his family, when he was about seven years old, leaving Alexandria and traveling to Nazareth in the Holy Land after the death of Herod the Great. It draws on both Biblical, historical, and other sources, such as one reference to Christ creating birds out of clay while bored. Real, flying, living birds, which was startling to his friends and classmates, to say the least. At the beginning of the novel, he also curses a kid who bullies him and his cousins, causing that boy to instantly die, and then promptly brings him back from the dead.
It is interesting how Jesus' divine nature is handled in the book. Naturally, he is not omniscient, as that would make such a first person narrative almost impossible. But he does have power and instant theological knowledge, and he heals people at several points. I think Rice did a difficult job well and managed to not include anything very theologically questionable
The main plot of the book centers around Christ trying to discover the truth about the circumstances surrounding his birth, in particular the killing of the innocents, which, understandably, no one in his family will talk about to him, and none of the rabbis he meets wish to discuss with a small child. So it is a mystery novel, but one to which the reader knows the solution.
Overall, I recommend this book very highly. It is easy to read, well written, and contains some beautiful scenes both of family life and of religious devotion, though, at the same time, there are some very horrible things that happen in it during the turmoil surrounding Herod's death.
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Oh, as a note, I meant to indicate in the post that the part about creating birds from clay as a child comes from the "Gospel" of Thomas, which has some very disturbing and Gnostic things in it, and is not recognized by any major extant church as authoritative as far as I can tell.
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