Temple Boys

Book excerpt: Jerusalem, year zero. Flea belongs to a gang of teenage vagrants living in the shadow of the Temple, with no family and no home, living on their wits and what they can beg or steal. The city is crowded with visitors for Passover and governed by an uneasy alliance between the Temple priests and the occupying Roman army, bringing talk of miracles and revolution. Flea and his comrades latch onto the newcomer in the hope that he'll offer them a secure home. As events accumulate and powerful forces gather around the Magician, Flea notices rumblings of discontent among his followers, and finds himself torn between one of them—the protective Jude, who employs Flea to run errands—and a brutal Roman spy determined to uncover the Magician's plans. Is the Magician the savior he claims to be, or a fraud? Does Flea hold the fate of the Magician—and possibly the world—in his hands, as he begins to believe? Temple Boys vividly conjures up ancient Jerusalem and the Biblical era and boldly re-imagines the western world's most famous story from the point of view of a teenage boy.