The audio book was read by Josh Heine, who has a young voice that contained the youthful wonder, but so American that I wish a different voice was chosen.

To my amazement, I felt that Anne Rice captured the world in which Christ lived on earth. The details were "right." To my surprise, Anne Rice, who shares my suspicion of the apocryphal accounts of Christ's childhood, used the details of such records in a believable way.

The basic theme of the book is how Jesus came to know His true identity, which is finally disclosed after the "Child Jesus in the Temple" incident recorded in the New Testament. Some of the good choices Rice made, in my opinion, was to have Joseph as a widower so that he had a son, James, whom she designated "the brother of the Lord." She also makes many of the name of family and friends tie together in a believable way.

The best part of the book is the "Author's Notes" at the end in which she describes her spiritual journey.

Just as interesting is her description of how she thoroughly investigates the historical background for everything she writes, and when she started researching the First Century, how she was shocked at the lack of historical basis for the commonly accepted views of skeptics.