Date Published: 04-08-2025
Publisher: She Writes Press
Jesus Christ—Yeshua, to his friends—is not happy. Two thousand years after his death, he sees Earth heading toward oblivion. Ever eager to save humanity, he asks Mary Magdalene (Magda) for help. It’s time to tell the real story of our time together, he says. Time to correct all the misinformation, misogyny, and lies spread by Peter, Paul, and the Roman Catholic Church. Still pissed that she’s been called a whore for almost two millennia, Magda resists—but ultimately, out of love for Yeshua, reluctantly agrees.
Through Magda’s words, Yeshua—to most today a symbolic, practically mythological Biblical figure—comes back to life as a man of flesh and blood, one wholly devoted to spreading his message of radical equality. Magda tells of her travels with Yeshua and his followers around Galilee, where they are menaced at every turn by Roman rulers. She relates tales of miracles and murder, jealousy and acceptance, misogyny and female empowerment. She describes her relationship with Yeshua, clarifying centuries of speculation about whether or not they were in love. And, painfully, she reveals the truth about who orchestrated his death.
But Magda’s narrative does not end there. Her life with Yeshua has taught her that she has more strength than she ever imagined, and she begins to tap into a spiritual power that is uniquely her own—the power to connect people. Magda’s true role in the history of humanity, it turns out, is just beginning to unfold.
Is There a Message in Your Novel That You Want
Readers to Grasp?
The message I would love readers to get from Magda
Revealed is the same message that Yeshua (as Jesus is named in the
novel) tries to spread: that we are all
fundamentally the same and fundamentally equal. Our current society is based on
inequalities of all kinds, especially wealth and power, that Yeshua, if he were
here, would decry. I imagine he would be traumatized to see where we have gone
in the past 2000 years.
Is there anything you find particularly
challenging in your writing?
For me, the hardest part of writing is letting
go of something I’ve written that I later decide needs to go. Sometimes, that’s
because it’s not necessary, or it’s slowing the pace. In the case of Magda
Revealed, which involved a lot of research, I had some long paragraphs of
description that were based on research rabbit holes I had gone down.
Ultimately, I decided to cut them because I realized that they were
superfluous, and I was only keeping them because I wanted to show how much
research I had done.
In
rare cases, I make the very painful decision that a character has to be cut,
because they’re not adding anything significant to the novel. That’s always
particularly painful, because I like most of my characters.
How many books have you written and which is your
favorite?
I’ve written two
novels–The Good at Heart and Magda Revealed–and two chapbooks of
poetry–In the Silence of the Woodruff and Rapunzel Revisited.
Asking me to choose my favorite is liking asking me which of my children I love
the most. I just cannot answer that question.
If You had the chance to cast your main character
from Hollywood today, who would you pick and why?
I would love to
have Saoirse Ronan play Magda. I think she has just the right combination of
grit, resilience, humor and spirituality.
When did you begin writing?
I started writing
as a child, but not with any regularity. When I
was a kid, I started a novel about Blackbeard, but I ultimately abandoned it
because I didn’t know anything about what it was like to be a pirate. As I
matured, I realized that I needed to support myself with an income, and I was
too scared to try to do that through writing, so I became a lawyer. For many
years, I channeled my writing instincts into legal writing, which was,
ultimately, very unsatisfying.
In 2001, I was able to take a three-month
sabbatical from my legal job at the Justice Department, and that convinced me I
really wanted to focus on my creative writing. So for the past 25 years, I’ve
been a full-time writer and a part-time attorney. I didn’t publish The Good
at Heart until I was 50 years old, so there’s hope for anyone out there who
is a late bloomer.
How long did it take to complete your first book?
Because I was
simultaneously raising three young kids and working part-time as an attorney,
it took about 10 years to complete The Good at Heart. Also, I’m a very
slow writer.
Did you have an author who inspired you to become
a writer?
Unquestionably,
Virginia Woolf inspired me to try to write fiction. I wrote my master’s thesis
on her, and have always been in awe of her ability to combine humor with
spirituality and poetry with prose in her writing.
What is your favorite part of the writing
process?
I love writing a
sentence or phrase, sitting back, and thinking “Huh, that’s pretty good.”
Doesn’t happen every day, but when it does, it’s very validating. In fact, when
I left my legal job at the Justice Department, one of my colleagues asked me,
“Do you know what I hope for you?” I thought he was going to say he hoped my
work would be a bestseller, or at the very least that I would get published.
Instead, he said, “I hope you’re always happy with what you’ve written.” And
that’s totally true. That’s all I really want, and so far, I’ve been lucky that
I am fairly happy with what I’ve written.
Describe your latest book in 4 words.
Mary Magdalene
Tells All.
Can you share a little bit about your current
work or what is in the future for your writing?
I’m currently working on a mystery/crime novel
with an alcoholic as a main character and AA as a background Greek chorus. In
the future, I’d love to write a young adult novel or children’s book featuring
animals. And I definitely want to write a novel that
deals with time travel.
About the Author
Ursula Werner has been writing for over twenty-five years. She has published one novel, The Good at Heart (2017), and two chapbooks of poetry, The Silence of the Woodruff (2006) and Rapunzel Revisited (2010). She holds graduate degrees in English literature and law, and works part time as an attorney. She and her husband live in Washington, DC, and are always trying to entice their three daughters to live nearby.
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