The Severed Breast

Set in first-century India, The Severed Breast tells the story of the Apostle Thomas’s epic struggle to convert India’s Hindus and Buddhists to Christianity. Betty, a college professor and world religions expert, brings to life ancient South India’s villages, cities, palaces, wars, famines, satis, tribes, castes, gods, beasts, her mountainous jungles and fishing coasts and rich rice plains, her steamy climate, and her traditions—all of which constitute Thomas’ strange new world. Through his eyes we experience the opulent life of the royal court in fabled Puhar, long ago swallowed by the sea, and the historic Battle of Venni in horrifying detail. Betty imaginatively presents through flashbacks the critical events in the story of Jesus and Thomas in faraway Judaea. He gives insight into Hinduism’s historic resistance to Christianity, then shows how they might live together in harmony. But the novel is more than a story about the travails of India’s first Christian missionary. It’s a love story, interlaced with treachery, between a vulnerable saint with godlike aspirations and a golden-skinned Hindu queen of the ancient Chola Empire.