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Bloody Fates, Damned Choices
In the Wake of Golgotha follows the reincarnations of Judas and Pilate through present-day New York as a crucifixion-obsessed killer forces them to confront guilt, justice, and whether any betrayal ever truly ends. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
‘The greatest story ever told’ is one full of hope, promise and redemption; however, it is also one of violence, betrayal, pain and punishment. It is this darker side of religion and history, one that too often gets glossed over and painted as mythology and ceremony that I felt was worth a second look. In the Wake of Golgotha is not a story about religion or the Bible, it is a story about bloody fates, damned choices and selfless second chances. It is a story about the death of legend – physically, practically, culturally & ideologically – in both ancient times and in the modern era. If indeed there are two sides to every story, I thought it worthwhile to take a closer look at who was actually responsible for enabling the ‘greatest’ story, why they were chosen, and what price did they pay for their roles in man’s most significant ‘betrayal.’
How did you balance the procedural realism of crime and death-row law with the novel’s spiritual and mythic elements?
When we intellectually and culturally consider capital punishment, we inevitably think in terms of modern era morality and relative to the humanity (adjective, not noun) of crime and punishment. Historical capital punishment is deemed barbaric and neatly banished to museums and mythology. However, despite the cross dangling on billions of necklaces worldwide over the ages, we rarely truly consider the most (in)famous capital punishment: the tortuous and bloody crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Ironically, and fortunately, the cross has become a symbol of peace and harmony; yet as a vessel of crucifixion it was anything but. I wanted to place the act of this particularly painful path of execution in the context of crime and punishment, so believers and non-believers alike would consider the act, the sacrifice, and the men responsible for the ultimate death-row tale. Additionally, I wanted the little we know about the historical elements of the actual trial to be juxtaposed with contemporary criminal trial and death row procedure. While the processes vastly differ, the end result is unequivocally, and frankly unimaginably, the same. Blind faith is a pivotal concept (and trap door) in In the Wake of Golgotha – legally, spiritually and otherwise.
Balthazar’s violence is graphic and ritualized. What role did discomfort play in how you wanted readers to engage with questions of punishment and mercy?
Discomfort is paramount in In the Wake of Golgotha. It is a story about reassessing uncomfortable histories and uncomfortable choices, as well as questioning comfortable mythologies and comfortable beliefs. Religion, and Christianity in particular, essentially is a history of graphic ritualized violence. A bloody history that all too often gets glossed over because of its inherent ‘happy ending’, yet Christianity’s most pivotal chapter and moment is a graphic ritualized act of violence that occured on Calvary Hill, aka Golgotha. My suggestion is that if we are to embrace what happened on that hill, and the divine aftermath, then we must acknowledge the violence that had to occur to fulfill the prophecies and scripture, and acknowledge the men and souls that enabled His bloody fall and ultimate rise. In the Wake of Golgotha casts a shadow about the uncomfortable struggle between God and the Devil, and the impact this eternal confrontation has had on everybody stuck in the middle between them.
When writing scenes of quiet restraint versus lush excess, how conscious were you of pacing language itself to mirror the characters’ inner states?
In the Wake of Golgotha is intentionally paced like a fever dream. Religion (not faith) is a balance of quiet restraint and lush excess – it is a tale of extremes from the lush Garden to the barren Desert. History’s, and literature’s for that matter, greatest and most tragic characters are journey’s into and about the extremes of a soul’s inner states. Ego & Id. Alpha & Omega. Darkness & Light. We all struggle with the shadow we cast in the pursuit of hope and joy while fleeing from regret and despair. Whether in ancient Jerusalem slipping from the pre-dawn stillness of Gethsemane into the gluttonous chaos of Herod’s Court and Temple and up the ragingly sorrowful Calvary Hill, or in modern-day New York stepping from the unnatural hush of an execution chamber into the timeless vacuum of a confessional booth and into the quietly colorful halls of an art gallery – the wildly diverse pacing of time and language relative to calm and chaos is meant to capture the wildly erratic climate of the characters inner states that are caught in a damned timeless maze of moral limbo.
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Judas, now Jude Issachar, an enigmatic social worker and part-time professor, and Pontius, now Peter Pheiffer, an unsettled defense attorney at a ravenous global law firm, have lived many lifetimes since their original encounter. However, Jude is aware of his past and is cursed by the fateful lure of the noose and the tree. Peter is damned by a recurring ignorance, a cruel cyclical awakening that creeps up on him as he is compelled to defend a sociopath who crucified three men.
Condemned for their role in humankind’s darkest betrayal, they must reckon with their pasts-and their futures-after a fateful, bloody collision of violence and addiction two millennia after their sentence began brings these lost souls together once more.
In the Wake of Golgotha
In the Wake of Golgotha braids the crucifixion story with a dark, present day New York crime narrative. Judas and Pilate walk the earth again as Jude Issachar, a social worker and literature instructor with a secret habit of controlled self-hanging, and Peter Pheiffer, a corporate lawyer drifting into a death penalty case that begins to wake an old guilt he cannot name. Around them moves Balthazar Bedrossian, an MRI tech who turns into a crucifixion-obsessed serial killer and leaves three men nailed to crosses in a Chinatown basement, with a bloody message that echoes words spoken on Calvary. The book moves between Golgotha, courtrooms, shelters, subways, and art museums. It treats time like a loop rather than a line. The result is a theological thriller about responsibility, addiction, justice, and the long reach of one moment on a hill.
The prose is lush and sensory, full of heat, dust, blood, and cramped city air, then suddenly snaps into something clipped and almost conversational. I liked that swing. It kept me slightly off balance, in a good way, and it fit a story where characters feel unmoored from their own lives. At times, the sentences pile up, and the metaphors jostle for space, and I caught myself rereading a passage not because I missed a plot point, but because the language had become thick and crowded. When the book slows down and lets a simple image stand alone, like the quiet of a homeless shelter after breakfast or the tap of a condemned man’s bare feet, it lands very hard.
The ideas in this novel gave me a lot to think about. The reincarnation of Judas, fully aware of his past betrayal, turns guilt into a chronic condition rather than a single act, and I felt the weight of that on Jude’s shoulders every time he touched his neck. Peter’s arc hit me in a different way. He walks around convinced he is an ordinary guy who chose corporate comfort, then finds himself face to face with a killer who recreates crucifixion while a hidden past claws its way into the light. That mix of legal procedure, spiritual dread, and moral confusion made the courtroom scenes genuinely tense for me, even before any supernatural hints came in. The book obsesses over punishment and mercy, over how a single choice repeats through history, and it keeps asking whether anyone can ever really start fresh. I finished sections feeling uneasy, but also weirdly moved, like I had been invited into a long argument between God, the devil, and everybody who ever stood between them.
In the Wake of Golgotha is not a casual beach read. It leans into graphic violence, addiction, death row procedure, and heavy spiritual questions, and it rarely lets the reader off the hook. I would recommend it to people who like literary crime fiction that has a strong theological spine, to readers who enjoy novels that play with myth and scripture, and to anyone willing to sit with messy questions about blame and forgiveness. If you are up for a dark, ambitious story that blends ancient sorrow with modern city grit, I think it is worth your time.
Pages: 354 | ASIN: B0FY3WCZWR
LITERARY TITAN 