Simultaneously written in Spanish and English, Miguel Santana’s third book, The Marien Revelation, unapologetically questions the foundations of Christianity and, by extension, our beliefs as a modern society. By re-contextualizing passages of religious texts and biblical stories that form the tenets of Western theology, Santana challenges our understanding of the New Testament and how it has informed the history of the Western hemisphere.
He sets in motion two female protagonists: Mary, living two thousand years ago in Judea, and Marien, a modern woman trapped in a loveless relationship and pregnant with an unplanned child. The dichotomy suggests that these women, although separated by millennia, experience love, sexuality and motherhood more similarly than one might assume. In the end, Santana resolves the story in Hollywood fashion, with a
This article appears in Feb 10-16, 2010.