Even if you know for sure you can't change the past, it's still your moral duty to try.
There is a bit of real physics and real history behind this novel. Wormholes are horribly unstable, but if you somehow managed to create one, you really could travel back in time. Opinions differ on whether you could “change the past” when you got there. On April 30, A.D. 66, Gessius Florus, the governor of Judea, randomly selected hundreds of Jews from the streets of Jerusalem and crucified them in the public market. In retribution. For an insult. Of all the Jewish aristocrats in the city, only one had the courage to stand up to the governor. A woman, Queen Berenike. Two witnesses from the far future, Ari Kazan and his wife Rivka Meyers, were there to see it all. This is their story.
What If …?
What if you were studying for your Ph.D. in archaeology and somehow got trapped in first-century Jerusalem after a controversial physics experiment went horribly wrong?
What if you knew the exact date when Roman troops would come sweeping into Jerusalem to crucify 3000 innocent people?
What if you could save some of those people — not all of them, but you could save the ones you loved — only if you stayed there in Jerusalem yourself during the rampage?
It’s A.D. 62 and Rivka Meyers has given up hope of ever going home. Her husband Ari is a physicist, and he says they’re stuck in the first century. He also says that the laws of physics say Rivka can’t change history. Rivka now believes him, but she also knows that anything not written in the history books is fair game for her to influence. The only problem is that the history books say nothing about whether she herself is going to survive.
About The Book
Retribution is a time-travel suspense novel that mixes science, history, religion, romance, and adventure. It’s about making hard ethical choices between two terrible wrongs. It’s about digging deep to help people who won’t be helped. It’s about being a badass fighter for justice, even when you’re fresh out of easy answers to hard questions.
Retribution won the 2005 Carol award for best Christian historical novel.
Retribution will take you on a wretched, miserable, dangerous vacation through the filthy, bandit-ridden streets of first-century Jerusalem, right into the jaws of the catastrophic Jewish revolt that began in the year 66.
Retribution is the third novel in the City of God series:
Book 1: Transgression (A.D. 57)
Book 2: Premonition (A.D. 57-62)
Book 3: Retribution (A.D. 62-66)
Excerpt
Cold fury stuck a sword through Rivka’s heart. Boldness welled up inside her. She jabbed a finger at Hanan ben Hanan. “You … you son of Satan! Hear now the curse of the seer woman. Before the third month of your high priesthood, you will be deposed. Before seven years have passed, you will see the destruction of all you hold dear, and you will die in your own house at the hand of an Edomite!” Rivka put her face up to the bars in the gate and spat in Hanan’s beard. “I am unclean with niddah uncleanness, and now you also are unclean until evening!”
Black rage slashed across Hanan’s face.
For an instant, Rivka felt certain he would slip a dagger through the bars into her heart.
Instead he spun away and stalked into the blackness of the night.
Rivka sagged against the iron gate. What had she done? Cursing the high priest—that was foolishness.
