Brothers in the Cross follows an archaeologist who, while investigating a murder in the West Bank, unearths a clue that leads his team to the Cross of Jesus. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

Finding that I have terminal diseases convinced me to rethink my understanding of faith. I had never been comfortable in talking religion. Somehow I sensed that my characters could, if we had something meaningful to say. I had read an article about the Ein Gede scroll and subsequently was musing about the Dolly the Sheep cloning, when the idea of cloning Christ exploded into my brain. I had to write that story! 

Brothers in the Cross is my introduction to publishing to the public, and my only work of historical fiction. It is my second book, though my first, Tales from Bedside Manor, a non-fiction memoir of the most memorable cases in my fifty year medical career, was written for my family and close friends and not released for sale or distribution.

I wrote Tales from Bedside Manor to preserve in short stories the ironies and bittersweet memories of life as an Internist (Internal medicine: a pediatrician for adults). It was to leave to my family an understanding of what those experiences had been like. My health was faltering, major irreversible coronary disease intruded soon overlaid by cancer. I could see the light at the end of the tunnel drawing closer and wanted to leave my mark. That was in 2010, Obamacare was passed and physician-directed primary care medicine began to die.

Writing Brothers in the Cross was different. Since childhood, I held a fascination with stories of the Holy Land. I was the questioning sort and the glib answers of true believers were never quite convincing enough for me. I wanted to believe, but I wanted to be convinced by something beyond blind faith. So I cocked my ears for discoveries that evolve with time and was rewarded by nuggets of insight that arose in random fashion over the years.

And then the threads collided. I was musing one evening and recalled the story of Dolly the Sheep and her cloning in Scotland. Furthermore, there had been articles about rogue doctors cloning human children in Korea and Mainland China. That was the epiphany that sparked my leap to consider what would happen if The Holy Cross of Jesus was found. What men with technology would do was never in question.

How much and what kind of research went into putting this novel together?

The book would write itself. Research required only confirming the facts that had accumulated over time. The closest distance between two points is a straight line. The closest hiding place for the Cross was near Jerusalem. Simon of Cerene was the man who carried it to the crucifixion. The most obvious source of Christ’s genes was the fatal Cross. The surrogate Mother would be Mary (Mariam is the Arabic translation). The Bible’s Revelations would suggest the other character, the Anti-Christ. Armageddon would pre-suppose a nuclear end. And the death of my primary care physician practice relegated me to the role of Chief of Occupational Health at White Sands Missile Range where I became acquainted with the nuclear accidents including the Demon Core incidents at Las Alamos Laboratory. Fate mixed with reason, so I wrote the book.

What is the next book that you are working on, and when will it be available?

I don’t have any plans to write another but stranger things could happen.

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