How
Much of This Book Is True?
Daughter of
God is fiction based on fact, much of which is
easily verified. For example, the true stories of the art theft and how
escaping SS troops used looted art to buy their freedom. You can rest
firm in the knowledge that many of the art works lost during the war
are hanging on the walls of chateaux in the Alps. Many more rest
beneath the streets of Zurich.
As I learned
first hand, many of these are fantastically valuable, far, far more
valuable than the estimation of a human life for someone asking the
wrong questions. I had my life threatened in Zurich for asking too many
questions. But more than Nazis and stolen art are those that deal with
how churches have become institutions of men rather than of the spirit.
The sections of
this book dealing with the Nicean Conference and the events and
religious controversies leading up to it are true. It is also a matter
of public record that Pope Pius XII turned a blind eye and a deaf ear
to the atrocities of the Third Reich. The recent book, Hitler's Pope
by John Cornwell make for an even more compelling case.
Students of
history, theology, geography, and political science will find many,
many more things in this book that are true.
Did
an historical Sophia exist?
Sophia means
"wisdom" in Greek. If you read Proverbs Chapter 8, you will find a
first person soliloquy by her - one of the few places in the
Jewish/Christian scriptures where the male-dominated editing failed to
remove a mention of the feminine divine.
To the ancient
Greeks and to the modern-day Eastern Orthodox churches, Sophia is a
very real, historical woman - or a concept made into flesh. Indeed, the
earliest versions of scripture indicate that the Holy Spirit in the
Christian Trinity is none other than Sophia.
Click here to read more.
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Where
Did You Get the Idea for Daughter of God? I can
thank the old Nazis who threatened to kill me.
Old Nazis? Death
Threats?
I have always
preferred to build my novels on a solid foundation of fact, and so my preparation for Daughter
of God included a massive amount of historical investigation that
included hands-on research at the U.S. National Archives into the Art
Looting Investigative Unit of the OSS (the World War II precursor of
the CIA). I set as my goal the task of locating at least one painting
that had disappeared into Nazi hands.
But one day I
found myself at an investigative dead-end on a gray, snowy day in
Munich where the trail of the art stolen by the Nazis had grown colder
than even the December weather.
Little did I know
that before the day was over, I would be sitting in an old bomb
shelter, meeting with one of Hitler's top aides.
Click here to read more about the
idea behind Daughter of God.
Can you recommend some good
books for further reading?
There are a number of very good and
interesting books on the religious
aspects, on art theft and about the Nazi's systematic looting of the
world's great art collections in World War II -- a shameful act that is
still plaguing museums, collectors and auction houses to this day.
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