Can you handle the truth?

 Sabar, Ariel.  Veritas: A Harvard Professor, a Con Man, and the Gospel of Jesus's Wife.  New 

         York: Doubleday, 2020.  ISBN: 9780385542586 

On September 18, 2012, in Rome near the Vatican, Prof. Karen King of the Harvard University Divinity School proclaimed the finding of a scrap of parchment that she dubbed, just for "reference purposes," the Gospel of Jesus's Wife.  Veritas explores what led up to this presentation and the fallout afterwards.

Ariel Sabar covered the Rome conference for Smithsonian Magazine in 2012.  He later wrote an article on the results of physical examination of the parchment in The Atlantic in 2016.  He has continued to dig into this story resulting in Veritas which walks the reader though the story in five acts.  Act I is Discovery with the presentation and early reception of the parchment.  Act II is Doubt where people outside Karen King's group raise questions on the dating of the manuscript and what she claims it means.  Act III is Proofs, proof of forgery in regard to an accompanying parchment and then proof in regard to the Gospel of Jesus's Wife.  Act IV is The Stranger, an investigation into Walter Fritz who provided Prof. King the parchment.  Sabar investigates Fritz's background, history, and possible motives for the forgery.  Act V is The Downturned Book of Revelations which is an inquiry into why Prof. King was so eager to proclaim the forgery as genuine. 

In Veritas, Ariel Sabar provides a detailed investigation of the whole Gospel of Jesus's Wife controversy from the beginning until now.  If you have an interest in early Biblical texts, forgery, and/or academic dishonesty, Veritas would be a good read for you.

The Limping Spy of Lyon

 Demetrios, Heather.  Code Name Badass: The True Story of Virginia Hall.  New York: Atheneum 

           Books for Young Readers, 2021.  ISBN: 9781534431874

Who was the "Limping Lady of Lyon?" "The most dangerous Allied spy in France?"  That would be Virginia Hall, a member of both the British SOE and the American OSS, not to mention being a volunteer in the French Army, and later the CIA.  So who is Virginia Hall?  Read Code Name Badass to find out.

Heather Demetrios was wandering around the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C. when she came upon a display of Virginia Hall memorabilia and was intrigued when she learned that Virgina Hall had made the Gestapo's most wanted list while operating with an artificial leg!  This was a story worth writing in grand style!

Demetrios opens Code Name Badass with Virginia "Dindy" Hall in context, i.e. providing information on her early life, her love of the outdoors, and her cheese-making skills not to mention her language skills.  She attended Harvard for a year, then transferred to Barnard College, and then studied abroad in Paris and Vienna.  After college, Dindy got a job with the Foreign Service as a clerk in Warsaw, Izmar (in Turkey where she had a hunting accident that cost her a leg), and later in Venice and Estonia.  In 1939, she left the State Department and moved to Paris.  With the beginning of WWII, she joined the French Army as an ambulance driver.  After the fall of France, Dindy made a strategic withdrawal to England, There she ended up in the Special Operations Executive and was back in France as an agent in Lyon.  That lasted until 1942 when Vichy France was occupied by the Germans and she dashed over the Pyrenees on her artificial leg. In 1944, Dindy left the SOE and joined the Office of Strategic Services as an agent in France where her cheese making skills provided her cover while she recruited, organized, and armed Resistance forces.  When the war ended, she was planning on infiltrating into Austria.  After the war, Dindy joined the the Central Intelligence Agency in the covert action arm.  She finally retired in 1966 and returned to the Maryland farm of her childhood with her husband whom she had met during her service in France.  She died in 1982.

 

In Code Name Badass, Heather Demetrios provides an interesting take on Virginia Hall and the role women played in the French Resistance during World War II.  She documents the facts, provides the juicy details and worships how Dindy succeeded in fulfilling her missions despite all odds.  Do not let the publisher fool you, this is a tale for all ages to enjoy!