On a late summer's day during the reign of Emperor Vespasian, the world seemingly ended for the Hebrew people of Palestine; tens of thousands died as Roman legions torched Jerusalem and demolished the Holy Temple, the very dwelling place of the Lord God Almighty of Israel. As blood-swollen gutters ran red and the smoke of hellfire blackened the sky, where was God? Was there meaning to life? To death?After nearly a century of restless churning under the oppressive Roman Empire. Zealot revolutionaries took up arms against the vaunted Roman legions; initial successes chased the Romans from Palestine but unleashed internal power struggles and bloodletting of the priestly aristocracy that was believed to be sympathetic to Rome. When the vengeful Roman legions returned, they swept through the Galilee, leaving cities and villages ablaze and the countryside littered with rotting corpses on crosses. Refugees swelled Jerusalem like goats herded to the slaughter pens.In the spring of 70 CE, the legions set upon Jerusalem and raised their siege engines and ramparts and launched their catapults. As the summer sun spiked hot, the city's defenses weakened, and before autumn arrived, the temple fell on the 9th day of the Hebrew month of Av. Months after the killing and dying finally ceased, winter rains doused the smoldering ruins and washed the blood and ash from sole wall remaining from God's magnificent marble temple.The Great Roman-Jewish War was a watershed moment--no, more than that, an apocalypse in which the end of the world seemed near--not only for the Hebrew people, but also for emerging Christianity, and "Wormwood and Gall" remembers this oft-forgotten setting for an early, important chapter in the history of the church. Amid death and destruction, the dispirited remnant of the followers of Jesus, who had been awaiting the return of their crucified messiah for four decades, needed encouragement and words of hope. In response, an unknown person compiled the good news narrative that has come to be known as "the Gospel according to Mark." This first gospel served as template and principal source document used by the later compilers of the gospels of Matthew and Luke. John, the fourth canonical gospel, came later still from a different stream of tradition. Although a scholarly consensus agrees with this context and chronology for the development of the gospel tradition, not much more is known about the individuals behind the gospels."Wormwood and Gall" is a fictionalized account of the birth pangs of the early church against the background of revolution, civil war, and apocalyptic devastation. This novel's characterization of the gospel's compiler is entirely fictional as history remembers virtually nothing about the actual person behind the gospel compilation--not even his real name. The gospel document does not identify its author. The terminology "the Gospel according to Mark" dates to a 2nd century identification of an associate of Peter, but current scholarship doubts that association. However, for the sake of consistency and familiarity, the novel's principal character shall be named Markos, the Greek form of "Mark".Scholars have long looked to the "setting in life" as the starting point in analyzing ancient Biblical manuscripts. Although Wormwood and Gall fictionalizes the characters behind the compilation of this gospel, the novel attempts to accurately recreate the events, chronology, and apocalyptic milieu of the Great Roman-Jewish War as the setting that influenced the formation of the first canonical gospel, which in turn influenced the later gospels.

Wormwood and Gall: The Destruction of Jerusalem and the First Gospel

Literature & Fiction

Holmen, RW

Genre Fiction

Smashwords

A bold, dark, and intense retelling of the Vietnam experience through the eyes of an army scout, the point man of Romeo-18, a camouflaged and face-painted four-man LRRP team inserted by helicopter into remote and unfriendly territory to search for "Charlie," the North Vietnamese soldiers who travelled the mountain gullies of the Ho Chi Minh trail. Golden Sand is less about patriotism and heroism than about the gut-wrenching reality for the Vietnam combat soldiers who are celebrated for simply doing their best to get by, not as superheroes, but as young men who often acted heroically but sometimes foolishly in circumstances not of their own choosing. One reviewer commented, "the bond and the folly of immortal combat ring loud and clear from the page, and the story's told with all the realism, language and pathos of experience." The mood of Golden Sand is dark and somber rather than triumphalistic: a hauntingly honest and brutally true retelling rather than a glorification of the Vietnam experience. The story opens as a young soldier receives combat infantry training at Fort Polk, Louisiana, and he soon lands in Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam, as the rest of the world celebrates Neil Armstrong's walk on the moon. After a torturous twenty-three day hump through the jungle, the now seasoned-veteran volunteers for the LRRPs. The LRRPs of Vietnam (Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol) were the cavalry scouts of their war, traveling by helicopter rather than mustangs into remote and unfriendly territory. The mountainous jungles of the central highlands were especially inhospitable, filled with snakes and wild animals, and criss-crossed with the tributaries of the Ho Chi Minh trail that lay hidden beneath the thick, triple-canopy jungle foliage. It was the job of small teams of LRRPs to penetrate the ridges and valleys of the rainforest to track and identify enemy activity. The remaining chapters of Golden Sand chronicle hair-raising missions to the field as well as the stand down time in the rear base camps. The author refers to "Golden Sand" as "autobiographical fiction." True incidents serve as inspiration for the book, but the stories are told with literary embellishment. The author served with K Company, 75th Infantry (Rangers) in the central highlands of Vietnam in 1969-70, and he was twice awarded a bronze star for valor in combat.

Gonna Stick My Sword in the Golden Sand: A Vietnam Soldier's Story

Wretched Man Publications

This novel of historical fiction plays out over the course of nearly five decades of Minnesota and American history beginning in 1891.Swedish immigrant Jonas Jönsson comes to America dreaming of a farm with a herd of spotted cattle, sturdy horses, and a big red barn that will dwarf the meager dwellings left behind in Sweden. With fits and starts, triumphs and tragedies, Jönsson’s pursuit of his dreams becomes a twisted journey across the sweep of American history. Turn-of-the-century Minnesota provides the setting, actual events form the backdrop, and real persons weave in and out of Jönsson’s fictional story.The reader quickly learns that the storyteller is the immigrant’s son, sharing his father’s secrets decades after the fact as the son lies on his deathbed. The main storyline, the immigrant’s journey, is occasionally interrupted by flash-forward, first person scenes set in the swanky elder care facility where the son is near death. The reader will learn that the son, the storyteller, was an influential lawyer and jurist.The novel is set in four Minnesota locales, and each provides important context. Swede Hollow is a mishmash of immigrant hovels on the east side of St. Paul, a landing spot for new immigrants and a departure point when they are ready to begin their new life in America. Jönsson holes up here–eager, impatient, anxious, and hopeful like the other teeming transients who dump into this slum, bound for somewhere else but lacking funds. Sidetracked by fate in his dreams of becoming a yeoman farmer, Jönsson finds himself in a lumber camp of northern Minnesota. The primeval pine forest provides sanctuary before expelling him, and he lands on the shores of Lake Superior in Duluth. The waters of the great unsalted sea alternately soothe and rage. He finally realizes his goal of tilling the virgin soil of his own farm in central Minnesota, but the farmland randomly offers or withholds its bounty. Through it all, the promise of America sometimes encourages but often disappoints him.The novel paints his journey against the backdrop of history over a fifty-year period: a legendary forest fire; labor strife in mining and shipping; the Great War; the nativist, labor-bashing, intolerant Red Scare; mid-America’s flirtation with the Ku Klux Klan; progressive prairie populism; and the Great Depression. Tribalism—religious, economic, cultural, political, and ethnic—posts roadblocks and causes detours in his journey to the American dream.In the end, the novel is about legacy and family in shifting shades of light and dark.

Lost in the Land of Milk and Honey: An Immigrant Saga

Literary

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Books by Holmen, RW

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Holmen, RW. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Wormwood and Gall: The Destruction of Jerusalem and the First Gospel

Gonna Stick My Sword in the Golden Sand: A Vietnam Soldier's Story

Lost in the Land of Milk and Honey: An Immigrant Saga