In the hours before Jesus' trial, Claudia, wife to Pontius Pilate, Roman magistrate of Jerusalem, has a vision in her sleep. She sees a man she has met before, Jesus, the husband of her friend Mary of Magdala, nailed to a crucifix, writhing in pain and offered only vinegar to quench his thirst. She sees men marching off to war, crosses emblazoned on their chests as they pillage foreign lands. She sees men and women fed to lions and burned alive. And she hears the name of her husband passed down through history... "suffered under Pontius Pilate."

Pulling from extensive research, Antoinette May recreates the known world of two–thousand years ago and puts an imaginative new twist on "the greatest story ever told." PILATE'S WIFE follows the life of Claudia as she travels to the battlefield of Gaul, the coliseum in Rome, the temples of Isis in Alexandria, and the holy temple in Jerusalem. The novel tells the story of Claudia's life as a mystic, describing the visions she saw leading up to her great vision of the crucifixion, but also her life as a woman, one torn between her duties as the wife of a Roman magistrate and her desires for the true love she has found with a gladiator.

Weaving together a vivid portrait of the Roman Empire at the beginning of the first millennium, the infighting and passions of the Roman royalty and upper–class, and an awe–inspiring recreation of the last days of Jesus, PILATE'S WIFE will offer a shocking new look at a story we thought we once new.