Risking crucifixion, Onesimus, an enslaved shepherd, flees his bitter half-brother and master, Philemon, only to find that freedom requires more than mere escape.

“. . . a masterful grasp of the cultural, political and spiritual context of the time . . . The heart of the novel beats for hope, and asks one essential question: what does it mean to truly be free?” —, author of Beyond the Point: A Novel

“. . . one of the best historical novels I’ve ever read on a New Testament figure . . . Mead’s novel utilizes cutting edge scholarship as he weaves a beautiful and inspiring story of hope and faith.” —Demetrius K. Williams, Professor of Comparative Literature and Religious Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukie; Editor of Onesimus Our Brother: Reading Religion, Race and Slavery in Philemon

“Through characters that are vividly complex, defying any easy, moralizing categorization, Mead delivers a thrilling piece of historical fiction that sheds needed light on a tiny letter whose controversial impact has been, and remains, gargantuan.” —, Associate Professor of New Testament Studies, Fuller Theological Seminary

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Story Recap

Onesimus, Philemon, and two other slaves travel to Hierapolis, where Philemon hopes to find a luxury buyer for his wool. The traveling party hears reports of deadly brigands on the road. When Philemon reveals the purpose of their journey, Onesimus remembers but does not divulge that he failed to take last season’s raw wool to a fuller of sufficient quality for luxury buyers.

After finishing their food, they made their way to the fabric vendors and the stall of Philemon’s first target. It was a tent with two interior poles. The dealer stood near one of them, behind a worktable draped with mauve fabric. He wore a flowing robe of the same hue over an embroidered linen tunic and was tying a bundle for an elegant middle-aged woman. As they entered the stall, the dealer’s eyes darted up and then back down to his work. “Welcome. I’ll be with you shortly,” he said, focused on the bundle.

Ropes fanned out from the top of the second pole, like spokes on a horizontal wheel, and attached to the tops of head-height stakes several cubits away. Sheets of fabric in dozens of purple shades draped over the ropes. Hierapolis was famous for its mineral hot springs, which craftspeople used to mix madder-root dyes that set in wool more permanently than other dyes. This made the city a production center for the purple fabrics prized by wealthy Romans. The root dyes from Hierapolis were so effective, they rivaled the Tyrian purple, milked from mollusks on the coasts of Phoenicia and Caria.

Onesimus slipped into a triangular space between sheets and ran his fingers over the fabric. The fibers were impossibly long and fine, and the color was perfectly even, as if the wool had been shorn from mulberry sheep. He lingered over the handsome cloth, stroking it with the back of his fingers. It was certainly a cut above Colossian fabric. He looked up and noticed Philemon frowning at him. He jerked his hand away and scooted out from between the sheets, wrinkling his nose as if to rearrange it on his face.

The woman left the stall with her package, and the dealer turned his attention to Philemon. “Thank you for waiting,” he said.

“No trouble,” said Philemon. “Your fabric is beautiful. The highest quality.”

“Indeed,” said the dealer, smiling. “I take it you are not here to buy?”

“What makes you say that?” said Philemon.

“A foolish customer compliments what he wishes to buy. And you don’t strike me as foolish.” His smile broadened. “Plus, your slave is carrying a bag overflowing with wool.”

“Perceptive,” said Philemon, appearing impressed. “As a matter of fact, I’m not a customer. I’m looking for a long-term buyer of my wool. Someone I can trust,” he said. “But now, where are my manners. My name is Philemon Cassius Titus. I’m an old friend of Marius Cordus, who recommended you.”

“Ah. Marius,” he said, hardening slightly, a reaction at odds with his warm tone. “Clever fellow. I knew him and his father for many years. Collected my taxes.”

“Shrewd businessmen,” said Philemon, his tone cold. “I grew up with him. We shared a tutor.”

The merchant nodded. “Nicomachus Kalyterou,” he said, extending his hand to Philemon. “How may I help?”

“We keep a flock in Colossae.”

The dealer nodded.

“For many years, we’ve sold to military suppliers. My father was an auxiliary. It’s what he knew. I helped him run the business, but I’ve always thought our wool was too fine for such a purpose. Recently he passed away, so it’s struck me as the right time to seek the proper kind of buyer.”

“I see,” said the merchant, his face serious. “My condolences.”

Philemon nodded.

“May I?” said the merchant, gesturing toward the bag of wool.

“Please,” said Philemon, waving at Tertius to let down the bag.

The merchant reached in and withdrew a clump three times the size of his hand. He took it to his workbench to examine. He smelled it. He tugged it. He held it in the sunlight and bent over it to study the fibers. He returned the clump to the bag and withdrew another, scrutinizing it in the same way. It, too, he returned to the bag, then looked up at Philemon. “My advice is to stick with military clients,” he said.

“Whatever do you mean?” said Philemon.

“I can’t use this wool,” said the merchant. “It’s clean enough, but your fuller has combed it too quickly. The fibers are torn and small. Won’t spin into the kind of thread I require. Also, the wool has a yellow tint to it. I’ve seen it before in Colossian wool. Throws off the dye color. If you wish to sell to luxury dealers, I’d suggest a new fuller, but that won’t change the tint.”

“Nonsense,” said Philemon, looking offended. “Our fuller is excellent. From Hierapolis, in fact. Stachys Aristou.”

“I know him. He does fine work.” The merchant sighed and gestured at the bag of wool. “All I can say is this doesn’t look like his work. Either his standards have dropped, or another fuller prepared your wool.”

“He did it,” insisted Philemon. “And the wool is not tinted. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Here,” said the dealer, pulling a wad from a bag under his table. “This is from one of my current suppliers.”

Philemon pulled a clump from his bag and set it beside the dealer’s. Next to the dealer’s wool, Onesimus could clearly see the golden tint. “I don’t see what you’re talking about,” said Philemon.

The dealer sighed and said, “Nevertheless, I won’t buy the wool.”

“Very well,” said Philemon, his tone curt. “I thank you for your time. Could you please direct us to Apollodorus Xanthou?”

“If I may say so,” said the merchant, “I highly doubt Apollodorus will . . .”

Philemon cut him off. “If you would kindly direct us.”

The merchant nodded deferentially and explained how to find the next dealer. They followed the directions but had no better luck; the second dealer drew the same conclusions. This time Philemon said nothing in reply but simply asked for directions to their final contact. The dealer again tried to spare them the trip, but Philemon insisted once more. Results with the third merchant were no different.

By the time they left the city it was mid-afternoon. Philemon walked ten paces in front of the slaves, smoldering, while Onesimus hung back, behind Primus and Tertius, avoiding provocation. After a mile, Philemon stopped and wheeled around, looking straight at Onesimus, waiting for him to catch up. His face was severe. Onesimus instinctively slowed his pace and began chewing a hangnail. When Onesimus had finally closed the gap, Philemon said, “Did you take the wool to Stachys?”

Onesimus tore at the hangnail with his teeth. The familiar sting blunted his fear. Should he lie? Surely the truth was obvious at this point. “No,” he said, sheepish.

“No?” said Philemon, raising his voice. His brows etched a deep furrow between his eyes, and his jowls rippled. “I expressly told you to take the wool to Stachys.” His face reddened.

“I would have, sir, but Pater . . .”

“You listened to that fool over me?” He was now yelling. “You miserable slave!” Philemon’s right arm flashed across his body as he struck Onesimus with the back of his hand. Onesimus recoiled and closed his eyes, holding his face. When he reopened them, Philemon had turned and started back down the road, kicking angrily at loose pebbles, his right hand balled into a fist that he pumped at his side every few steps, cursing under his breath.

Onesimus dawdled and again drifted to the back of the group, sipping at his wineskin for comfort. At first his face felt hot and fat, but then his jaw began to ache, and the swollen red skin of his cheek stung. Selfish bastard, he thought. What should he have done? Yes, Philemon had told him to take the wool to the fancy fuller, but at the time, he was not his master. Onesimus fixed on the impossible situation Philemon had put him in. Anger surged in his chest, and he clenched his teeth as he pictured his brother’s irate face before he’d lashed out. Had Philemon expected him to disobey the paterfamilias? The thought of running in the opposite direction crossed his mind, escaping back into the city crowds. He wanted to yell. He kicked a cobble off the muddy road, and his toe began to throb.

A few miles out of town, the market traffic thinned, and Onesimus found himself half a stadium behind the rest of the party. He suddenly felt vulnerable. He picked up his pace and walked closer to Primus and Tertius, who glanced over their shoulders as they heard his footsteps slapping the dirt road behind them. Philemon still marched at the front of the group, but he’d also shaded closer to the two burly slaves.

They passed within three miles of Colossae, and the sun set behind dense clouds, bleeding the last light from the day. Rain pattered on the near-dry ground. Still at the back of the group, Onesimus sipped wine, straining to see the road ahead and any movement in the fields adjacent.

A mile from Colossae, he heard a voice call out from twenty steps behind: “Hello!” All four travelers whirled around, searching for its source. Two men loped out of the darkness. As they drew closer, Onesimus could see they were broad-shouldered, but shorter than Philemon and the other two slaves. He didn’t recognize them. Both had rough-trimmed beards and flowing hair that covered their foreheads, ears, and necks. They wore gold nose rings and cloaks pinned at their right shoulders, and the grassy stench of horse dung wafted from their clothing. Broad flat swords with curved ends and long handles hung without scabbards from their belts.

Tertius and Primus gripped the handles of their weapons. Onesimus felt sick and chewed his cheek. He drifted beside and behind the other three.

The two long-haired men scanned the travelers. Onesimus could see them registering the weapons and baggage carried by the slaves. Still sizing them up, one of them said, “How far are you heading?” His accent was thick and northern.

“Colossae,” said Philemon, his voice shaky, its pitch higher than normal. “And you?”

“Perga.”

“Three days’ journey,” said Philemon, his voice still shaky. “Traveling through the night?”

The spokesman nodded.

“Best be careful,” said Philemon. “Reports of bandits on this road.”

“That so,” said the spokesman, unmoved.

Onesimus narrowed his eyes, studying the men in the cloud-filtered moonlight. They weren’t carrying any luggage. Emboldened by their seeming intent not to harm, he said, “Where’s your baggage?”

The spokesman smiled as if Onesimus had told a joke. “We travel light. Only what we carry in our cloaks. And on our belts.” He made a restrained but menacing gesture toward his sword.

“Well, we must be on our way,” said Philemon. “Will you join us as far as Colossae?”

“We have important matters to discuss. We’ll follow behind. But we’d take some food if you have any.”

“I’m afraid we’ve eaten the last of it,” said Philemon. “We’ve only been out for the day.”

The spokesman nodded.

“Farewell, then,” said Philemon, and the four travelers turned again toward Colossae, casting nervous glances over their shoulders. Onesimus heard footfalls on the wet road behind as the two men followed at a distance. He could hear them speaking. Their low tones and sharp whispers sounded like a coarse tongue other than Greek. Then, after several moments, he realized he could no longer hear them. He looked back along the road, and they were gone.

Next chapter

(Link goes live: September 6th, 2026)

Risking crucifixion, Onesimus, an enslaved shepherd, flees his bitter half-brother and master, Philemon, only to find that freedom requires more than mere escape.

“. . . a masterful grasp of the cultural, political and spiritual context of the time . . . The heart of the novel beats for hope, and asks one essential question: what does it mean to truly be free?” —, author of Beyond the Point: A Novel

“. . . one of the best historical novels I’ve ever read on a New Testament figure . . . Mead’s novel utilizes cutting edge scholarship as he weaves a beautiful and inspiring story of hope and faith.” —Demetrius K. Williams, Professor of Comparative Literature and Religious Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukie; Editor of Onesimus Our Brother: Reading Religion, Race and Slavery in Philemon

“Through characters that are vividly complex, defying any easy, moralizing categorization, Mead delivers a thrilling piece of historical fiction that sheds needed light on a tiny letter whose controversial impact has been, and remains, gargantuan.” —, Associate Professor of New Testament Studies, Fuller Theological Seminary

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Story Recap

The slaves of Philemon’s household gather at the Lycus River for the Christian conversion ritual of baptism. Onesimus puzzles over the baptismal formula: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” As a devotee of the goddess Artemis, Onesimus tries to avoid the ritual but is baptized against his will. He receives a necklace with a wooden cross.

The meeting after the baptism vexed Onesimus as much as he’d expected. He stood in the back, listening to Philemon relate a story about Christians in Ephesus who’d been imprisoned, including a man named Paul, someone Philemon seemed to idolize. Archippus prayed a convoluted prayer for the prisoners—sometimes in Greek, sometimes in Aramaic, the native tongue of the Jewish people—then delivered an equally ponderous teaching about a man named Abraham, his circumcision, and his worship of angels, all of which was a bizarre test of patience.

For the next four days, the weather was miserable. Stifling low clouds sent steady rain, softening the sheepfold to a muddy mess. Round cakes of dung and dirt hung from the sheep’s underbellies, wobbling as they walked. The shepherds dragged, their clothing constantly damp, gloomy in their work. Even the unquenchable spirit of the dogs sagged from the wet.

Three nights in a row, as rain pounded, Onesimus had the same dream. He stood in the middle of the river wearing a cream-colored tunic while snow fell around him. Epaphras stood beside him and said, “In the name of the Archangel Gabriel!” and then submerged him in the icy waters, holding him under. Just as the urge to breathe became unbearable, he’d wake in a cold sweat.

On the fourth day, a messenger from the domus arrived and told Onesimus he’d be traveling to Hierapolis with Philemon the next day. He was to meet his master at dawn, at the north gate. That night, the dream repeated. Only this time, Philemon held him under.

The next morning, they met as planned. The rain had let up, but the roads were still sodden, and the clouds oppressed from above, shading the valley in dull grays and browns. Philemon stood waiting with Tertius and another stout slave, Primus. Tertius carried a club and a sizable leather bag stuffed with wool, while Primus carried a smaller sack and a broadsword in its scabbard, swinging from a baldric. Security detail, thought Onesimus. He greeted Philemon with a reserved nod.

“You’re late,” said Philemon, obviously irritated.

It couldn’t have been much past dawn, though the cloud cover made it hard to tell. “Forgive me,” said Onesimus, his tone ambiguous.

Philemon stared at him. “Let’s not waste any more time,” he said and struck out north along the colonnade, toward the river. The three slaves followed, Onesimus a step behind his master, the other two bringing up the rear. Their journey was sixteen miles. Many times, Onesimus had trekked to Laodicea—twelve miles along the trunk road—but he’d never been north to Hierapolis.

Not far outside Colossae, the road climbed a hill yielding a view of the Lycus below, twisting and turning its way downstream toward the Maeander, skirting shallow gravel bars on one side, eroding cut-banks on the other. Onesimus surveyed the valley stretching west for signs of Colossae’s sister cities, but a mass of rising fog melded with the low clouds and obscured them, along with the ridges to either side, like the gods had fixed a misty lid over the world, trapping them in the dreary landscape. Their boots splashed and squished along the waterlogged track, and the breeze carried melancholy birdsong. Onesimus drifted into a trance.

Five miles along, Philemon looked over his shoulder. “Why are we going to Hierapolis?”

The words jarred Onesimus to attention. They sounded more like a statement than a question. He glanced at Tertius, carrying the large bundle. He wasn’t sure Philemon was talking to him, but since neither of the other slaves answered, he said, “To sell wool?”

“Very good,” said Philemon, sarcastic. “But we can sell wool in Colossae. Why Hierapolis?”

Last spring, Philemon had paid a visit to the shepherds at the villa—the first time Onesimus had ever seen him set foot in the sheepfold. It was the last day of shearing, and Onesimus sat on a stool, itself perched on the wooden shearing floor. The twins held a testy ewe while Onesimus clipped her shaggy belly, carefully separating the winter wool from the spring rise while avoiding capricious hoofs. A shadow fell across their work as Philemon filled the door frame, blocking the sunlight. He entered the shed, stooping to avoid the lintel, then stood up straight and looked with displeasure at the untidy tools and equipment. “Stop your work,” he said. The gruff order was moot; his arrival had alarmed the ewe, so they’d already stopped. The twins loosened their grip on the animal, and Onesimus set down his shears, sitting up straight to relieve his aching back. “You must take the wool to a different fuller this year,” he said. “To Stachys, the new man from Hierapolis. Stall next to the agora.” Onesimus nodded. Philemon made no eye contact as he spoke, and he left without another word, his face hard and thankless.

The next day, Pater had come to the sheepfold—a common occurrence as he’d had an active interest in his flock. Onesimus had boiled lupines in a cauldron, added wine dregs, and was using a straw brush to slather the mixture onto the newly sheared sheep, a balm for shearing wounds. Pater fussed over the animals’ bedding, the mud in the sheepfold, and the consistency of the balm. Finally, he said, “Did Philemon visit yesterday?”

“Yes, sir.” Onesimus tried not to recoil from his master’s breath, which smelled of rotten fruit.

Pater nodded. “What did he want?”

Onesimus felt as though he’d sprung a trap and was about to be turned upside down, hoisted into the air by an unseen rope. “Told us to bring the wool to a new fuller,” he said, his voice hesitant.

“Stachys?”

Onesimus nodded.

Pater looked at the ground, and Onesimus noticed the muscles in his square jaw ripple as he clenched and unclenched them. “You will not take the wool to Stachys,” he said, forcing his voice to be calm. “You’ll take it to Rufus. As we always have.” He pulled the wineskin out from under his cloak, took a long draw, and said, “The stupid boy thinks our wool should clothe the rich and soft of Hierapolis.” He looked out the window. “We will always clothe the Roman soldier.” Then he looked Onesimus in the face, eyes fierce, and said, “Take our wool to Rufus.” Onesimus had taken the wool to Rufus.

Philemon repeated his question, impatient. “Why Hierapolis?”

Onesimus studied his brother’s face, nerves jangling, calculating how to answer. From Pater’s visit last spring, Onesimus knew the point was to look for rich clients, but he wasn’t eager to say how he knew it, and he didn’t want to play his master’s game. “Don’t know, sir.”

Philemon looked smug. “Pater left our finances in disarray,” he said, with a hint of bitterness. “It falls on us to dig out.” He paused. “Now. How will we do that?”

Again, Onesimus said, “Don’t know, sir,” timing his eye-roll to avoid detection.

“Well, I can tell you how we won’t do it. By selling to low-profit military clients. Pater’s bunch. It’s the rich we need. Luxury vendors. And Hierapolis has plenty. We’ll visit three today.”

Onesimus suddenly fixed on a problem that could implicate him. “Sir,” he said, “our wool may not be good enough for those clients. Our fuller didn’t prepare the wool to . . .”

“Nonsense,” said Philemon, cutting him off. “Just this spring we had our wool washed and combed by the finest fuller in Colossae. Tertius is carrying a sample from that batch.”

Should he tell Philemon that Rufus and not Stachys had prepared the wool? Philemon would surely blame him for failing to take it to Stachys. And anyway, he’d tried to warn him. Maybe the vendors would still take it. He felt he’d said all he should. “Yes, sir.”

The road drifted from the river’s comforting gurgle toward the foothills on the north side of the valley. They passed stone outbuildings on the edge of dormant fields where cut grayed stalks, the remainder of a fall crop, poked through the mud like a man’s face in need of a shave. They walked in silence.

Philemon greeted two merchant groups that passed them on the road, heading in the opposite direction, their donkey-drawn carts stacked with wares from Smyrna. Each group told a similar story of bandits on the road two days before: merchants heading east, goods stolen, throats cut, bodies strewn beside the road. No one knew how many bandits there were since there’d been no survivors. Both groups warned them off the road at night. The story seemed not to perturb Philemon’s two beefy house slaves, but it set Onesimus on edge. He startled at every rustling bush and snapping twig. Philemon played the story down, but after the second telling, he, too, seemed anxious. They were only a party of four. Depending how many brigands there were, they could easily be outmatched. Onesimus lagged behind and drank from his wineskin, dulling his nerves.

By the fourth hour, the road began a gradual climb and traffic increased, fed by smaller country roads joining their route. This slowed progress, but Onesimus was relieved to be off the lonely stretch southeast of Hierapolis. Two miles further and they joined the road connecting Hierapolis to Laodicea, following it north with a steady stream of travelers on their way to market. The clouds lifted, revealing the calcareous cliffs of Hierapolis in the distance, spilling like rolls of steaming wool down the valley slope.

After midday, they reached the agora at the north end of the city, a massive open marketplace swirling with activity. They found a food stall and lunched on fried bread, goat cheese, and salted olives. The smell of animals wafted across the packed plaza. Merchants droned in multiple languages. The stall was adjacent to an open area, across which Onesimus noticed well-dressed customers perusing fettered naked people, chained to wooden stakes lodged in the ground. He stared, transfixed, and began to chew the inside of his lower lip.

Since his first brush with the slave market in Colossae, he’d counted himself lucky to be born on the estate. Though every slave was part of the master’s household, vernae were usually treated more as family than purchased slaves, who were more likely to be sold on. And to be sold at market was a roll of the dice. Without specific skills or education, the chances of ending up a prostitute were high, whether male or female. He thought of his mother. He could see customers across the way appraising the human stock, prodding and squeezing exposed flesh, scanning for defects. He noticed a young girl with a single fetter on her ankle. She was naked, trying to cover her flat chest with her twiggy arms, staring at the ground. A rail-thin man with a silver beard spoke to her. He put his hand under her chin and raised her face to look into her eyes. Tears glistened on her upturned cheeks. She couldn’t have been ten years old. Onesimus felt his palms sweating, and the inside of his lip was ragged.

He’d once known a girl named Chloe, a slave at the villa whom Pater had purchased when both she and Onesimus were eight years old. She was young and inexperienced, but she was cheap, and the kitchen slaves needed help. Onesimus was smitten. She was shy, earnest in her work, and her mousy bangs were cut straight across the middle of her forehead. But it was her eyes that captured him. To most people, he imagined, they seemed ordinary: small and brown, like most every other slave girl. But inside those delicate brown circles, Onesimus saw a sadness, a sadness too expansive for her bony frame, and yet there it was, a sadness he longed to hold and comfort, a sadness he understood. Mostly she washed dishes, cleaned pots, and scrubbed floors, out of sight, but sometimes she served in the dining room, and at those meals he could hardly remember eating, his mind a blissful fog. Sometimes he spied on her from the portico as she clipped herbs in the courtyard. And she knew it. They played chase with the other children in the field between the villa and the sheepfold, but, to them, there were only two children playing, her chasing him, him chasing her. Then, one day, a comrade of Pater came to town, on his way east. Chloe served them dinner, and the next day she was gone. When Onesimus asked Apphia what had happened, she told him Pater had sold the girl to his comrade for five times what he’d paid.

Next chapter

Risking crucifixion, Onesimus, an enslaved shepherd, flees his bitter half-brother and master, Philemon, only to find that freedom requires more than mere escape.

“. . . a masterful grasp of the cultural, political and spiritual context of the time . . . The heart of the novel beats for hope, and asks one essential question: what does it mean to truly be free?” —, author of Beyond the Point: A Novel

“. . . one of the best historical novels I’ve ever read on a New Testament figure . . . Mead’s novel utilizes cutting edge scholarship as he weaves a beautiful and inspiring story of hope and faith.” —Demetrius K. Williams, Professor of Comparative Literature and Religious Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukie; Editor of Onesimus Our Brother: Reading Religion, Race and Slavery in Philemon

“Through characters that are vividly complex, defying any easy, moralizing categorization, Mead delivers a thrilling piece of historical fiction that sheds needed light on a tiny letter whose controversial impact has been, and remains, gargantuan.” —, Associate Professor of New Testament Studies, Fuller Theological Seminary

Want a different chapter?

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Story Recap

Onesimus and the other slaves in Philemon’s household are required to gather at the Lycus River early Sunday morning for a mysterious ritual. Beforehand, Onesimus deposits his earnings—his peculium—with Philemon’s steward. At the river, Onesimus discovers that the ritual is baptism, the rite of Christian conversion, which he does not want to undergo.

Just as Onesimus scoped an escape route, Philemon’s square frame lumbered into the clearing with Monica and a man Onesimus didn’t recognize, the three of them emerging from the downriver path. Monica and the man also wore cream-colored garments, but Philemon’s clothes were bright white. The new man was wiry and handsome, with a full head of graying curly hair and a short scraggly beard. He wore a grubby cloak over his new cream tunic. His leather traveling boots were worn, and the bridge of his crooked nose was sunburned. He smiled with excitement, surveying the crowd of slaves.

“Who’s that,” Onesimus said in a low voice, heart accelerating. He picked at a thumb hangnail with an opposing finger.

“Epaphras,” said Neos. “Started the gatherings . . . in Colossae and Hierapolis. Laodicea.”

The three greeted Archippus and Apphia with kisses on either cheek. Apphia shifted her sycophantic attention to Epaphras, which seemed to make him uncomfortable, unlike Archippus, who’d welcomed it. Philemon stood next to Epaphras, facing the crowd, and clapped his hands twice. When he had their attention, he stepped back, and Epaphras began to speak. Archippus pushed his way past Apphia and Monica and stood on the other side of Epaphras, almost touching him. His face relaxed into false piety. Epaphras cast a sideways glance at him and inched away, continuing his comments. Onesimus could make little sense of Epaphras’s speech, though he found the mention of “dying in the waters” troubling. Epaphras finished his speech with a prayer and then stepped down off the riverbank onto a sandbar at the water’s edge. After stripping to his undergarment, a light tunic, he tossed his cloak and the heavier tunic on a rock. Turquoise veins crisscrossed his lean forearms, bulging even in the cold air.

Onesimus hung back, still standing next to Neos, fretting over Epaphras’s talk of death in the water. His innards felt like dough kneaded by a muscled baker. “Does it hurt?”

Neos snickered.

“How long does he hold you under?” said Onesimus.

“Well, it just . . . it’s only . . .”

Onesimus glanced up to see if Neos would finish the sentence, but his fellow shepherd was staring across the crowd at Felicitas, lost in thought. Onesimus shook his head. He supposed he’d understand the ritual soon enough.

Epaphras waded into the slow-flowing river up to his waist. He winced at the cold, then smiled as if to show it wasn’t so bad. Archippus had also taken off his sandals, hitched up his robe, and waded into the river, though the temperature sapped his courage, stopping him mid-shin. One of the black tassels on his robe dipped in and out of the water.

Epaphras beckoned a young house slave into the stream. The slave obeyed, drawing shallow halting breaths to cope with the cold. “What’s your name?” said Epaphras.

“Secundus,” said the slave.

“Secundus, do you turn from your sin and vow to follow Jesus the Christ?”

“I do,” said the slave, stuttering from the cold.

Then Epaphras spoke a scripted phrase of some sort, a formula: “You are all children of God. For as many as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

At that moment, Archippus called out, “In the name of the Archangel Michael!” He glanced over his shoulder, checking that all on shore had heard him.

Epaphras shot him a fiery look, impelling him toward shore, and repeated the first formula. He then tipped the slave backward into the river, one hand under his head and one under his back. After submerging him for a moment in the frigid current, he lifted Secundus out of the water and directed him back to shore. The slave was now gasping and shivering erratically. His over-saturated clothing dripped a gleaming trail across the sandbar.

Neither slave nor free, thought Onesimus. What could it mean? The first part—“neither slave”—made it seem like the baptism would free Secundus. But then, Neos, the twins, and others already baptized remained Philemon’s slaves, so that couldn’t be it. The second part—“nor free”—made it seem like any baptized free person would lose their freedom, become enslaved somehow. But that couldn’t be it either—look at Philemon and Monica. So what did it mean? Was there some third condition, neither enslaved nor free? No. You were either a slave or a free person; it had to be one or the other. The phrase seemed like word games to Onesimus—words that made no logical sense. Yet still, they seemed to capture something of the way he felt. He no longer felt like a slave: surely his brother had made a mistake in not freeing him—a mistake that would be rectified if only they found the will. But, of course, he didn’t feel free either. Here he was, forced to do something he didn’t want. The words teased him, as if referring to something profound, right there in front of him, yet something he couldn’t quite see.

At the riverbank, Philemon stopped Secundus and looped a leather necklace over his jittering head. A small wooden cross dangled from the leather. Philemon said to him, “You’ve died with Christ. Your sins are forgiven.” Then Monica passed him a set of the new garments and said, “You are raised with Christ. Clothe yourself in love.” Secundus scuttled to the bushes to change into the dry clothes. After him, a line of slaves entered the bitter waters, one after another, each wheezing and spluttering with cold. Archippus lingered in the shallows, chastened, silent, watching nervously.

Onesimus faded to the fringe of the clearing and inched toward the path back to the colonnade, trying not to be noticed. His heart galloped in his chest. He edged sideways and backwards, eyes locked on Philemon, who faced away from him, toward the river, where the baptisms continued. If he could get back to the domus, he thought, he could hide somewhere outside and rejoin the group as they went in for the meeting. Philemon might not notice. At least twenty-five slaves were set for baptism. Brotherly love wouldn’t keep Onesimus top-of-mind—that he knew for sure. He felt his hands sweating. The clothing would be a problem. All would be in their cream garments, and he’d be in his shabby grays, announcing his rebellion. Still worth the risk, he thought. If Philemon diluted his own devotion to Artemis with this tradition-hating faith, that was his business. But Onesimus wanted no part of it. If questioned, he’d say he lost the group on the way to the river.

He finally made it to the path and turned to face the direction he was heading, picking up his pace to a brisk walk, heart still pummeling his ribs. He took a deep inhale and sighed. He realized he’d barely been breathing. After rounding a corner, putting himself out of view of the clearing, he stopped, retrieved the wineskin from under his cloak, and took another deep draft. He felt his shoulders loosen. He re-corked the skin, whispered a prayer of thanks to the goddess, and continued his quick pace up the path toward the colonnade. Then, behind him, he heard, “Onesimus!” Damn it, he thought. He looked back and saw Tertius, an enormous house slave, as thick and square as Philemon, bounding up the path toward him, wearing the cream-colored garments, hair wet. He reached Onesimus and said, “Where are you going?”

Play stupid, thought Onesimus. “Back to the domus. Get a head-start on the meeting,” he said. His shoulders retightened, his hands sweat, and his heart began to pound again.

“But you haven’t been baptized.”

“That’s okay,” he said, and turned to continue along the path, away from the river, pretending Tertius had accepted his point. Without a word, the big slave grabbed Onesimus by the upper arm and tugged him back toward the river. “What are you doing?” said Onesimus. Tertius looked at him, unimpressed, and pulled him harder toward the clearing. Onesimus reviewed his options. Fight him? Even if he managed to break free, things would end badly. He could no longer rejoin the crowd at the domus and claim a misunderstanding. Or claim he’d gotten lost. He’d have to head for the villa, but Philemon would send more slaves after him in no time. He’d be whipped for sure. Unable to see an alternative, he yielded and headed back down the path with Tertius, his arm still shackled in the slave’s tight grip.

They re-entered the clearing, and the entire group turned and stared. Epaphras stood idle in the chilly current. Philemon glowered. Everyone else had been baptized. Tertius released his grip, and Philemon waved Onesimus to the river. He kicked off his sandals and trudged toward the bank. As he passed his brother, he focused his eyes on the sandy ground in front of him, gray and moist under his feet. His brother’s disapproving look felt like physical pressure. He stepped down from the bank, crossed the bar, and waded into the water, which swirled around him, casting stolen heat downstream in arctic eddies. At waist deep, he could hardly breathe.

Epaphras welcomed him with a concerned smile. He smelled like fresh sweat and dirt. Epaphras asked his name, then said, “Onesimus, do you turn from your sin and vow to follow Jesus the Christ?”

Onesimus hesitated. He glanced again at his brother, glaring from the riverbank, then finally nodded.

Epaphras seemed anxious. He looked to Philemon, who raised his eyebrows, pressed his lips together, and tilted his head slightly forward. Epaphras looked back at Onesimus, juddering in the current, and recited the formula, “. . . neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one . . .” He dunked him as he had the others, and they made their way back to shore, Onesimus fighting to fill his cold-shocked lungs with breath. He felt defiled, like he’d been submerged in a river of dung.

Onesimus stepped onto the bank. Philemon frowned and draped a leather necklace over his head, which still vibrated from the cold. “You’ve died with Christ.”

Monica handed the cream-colored garments to him, gave a sympathetic look, and said, “You are raised with Christ. Clothe yourself in love.”

Onesimus hurried into the bushes to change. He shimmied out of his wet clothes and began slipping on the fine wool undergarments, even as water continued to drip off his body. He pulled on the tunic and noticed the ornamental cross dangling from his neck, alongside his Artemis charm. An instrument of torture. An appropriate gift from his brother, he thought. What kind of death cult had he joined? Had he in fact joined it? He shifted the wooden cross so it hung behind his neck, against his back, then kissed the silver charm and whispered an apology to the goddess. He tucked the charm under the front of his tunic, over his heart, wrapped himself in the new cloak, and steeled himself for the next indignity.

Next chapter

Risking crucifixion, Onesimus, an enslaved shepherd, flees his bitter half-brother and master, Philemon, only to find that freedom requires more than mere escape.

“. . . a masterful grasp of the cultural, political and spiritual context of the time . . . The heart of the novel beats for hope, and asks one essential question: what does it mean to truly be free?” —, author of Beyond the Point: A Novel

“. . . one of the best historical novels I’ve ever read on a New Testament figure . . . Mead’s novel utilizes cutting edge scholarship as he weaves a beautiful and inspiring story of hope and faith.” —Demetrius K. Williams, Professor of Comparative Literature and Religious Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukie; Editor of Onesimus Our Brother: Reading Religion, Race and Slavery in Philemon

“Through characters that are vividly complex, defying any easy, moralizing categorization, Mead delivers a thrilling piece of historical fiction that sheds needed light on a tiny letter whose controversial impact has been, and remains, gargantuan.” —, Associate Professor of New Testament Studies, Fuller Theological Seminary

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Story Recap

Philemon dines with Marius at the ninth-day feast in honor of Pater, hosted by the Fellowship of the Crossroads Temple. Philemon reluctantly reveals he has become a Christian. He discovers that Marius has been appointed governor of Asia and has imprisoned Philemon’s religious mentor, Paul. Onesimus serves at the feast, recording the receipt of Fellowship dues.

Half an hour before dawn, a house slave shook Onesimus awake. He sat up in his cot, confused at first by his surroundings—the slaves’ quarters in the domus. The day before, a messenger had told the villa slaves that Philemon required most of them at the river for a ritual early Sunday morning. Afterward, they’d meet back at the domus. The messenger had also said that all but a few slaves would be required at meetings every Sunday morning from then on. Onesimus wasn’t sure about the ritual, but he suspected the meeting was a gathering of Christians. Most Sundays, his shepherds would head to Colossae for such meetings. He understood they mostly met outside, in the marketplace, sometimes in the agora at the top of the city, which made meeting at the domus seem puzzling. Had his brother converted? Onesimus couldn’t see what else the meeting would be.

The prospect of the gathering chafed him like a rough loincloth. The new religion intruded on Greek traditions. Even the Romans embraced the Olympian gods, albeit with Latin names and a few minor adaptations. Why couldn’t the Christians do the same? They seemed to hate tradition of all kinds. According to the shepherds, the faith was about a Jewish man called Jesus, but, confusingly, they also embraced non-Jews without requiring Jewish conversion—unlike the proper Jewish faith. Jesus couldn’t even follow his own tradition. They called him “Lord” and “Christ,” and they worshiped him as if he were a god but, from all Onesimus had heard, he was just a man. After all, he’d died a slave’s death, crucifixion—a fact they made much of. A sign of the creator-god’s forgiveness, they said. But what kind of god forgives? A weak one, thought Onesimus. Did Artemis forgive Actaeon when he stumbled on her naked, bathing in the forest? The virgin huntress turned him into a stag and set his own dogs on him, tearing him to pieces. This was the act of a true god, he thought. Vengeance. Judgment. A god of forgiveness was a pretender, no god at all.

Onesimus tugged at his left boot in the half-light, but his foot wouldn’t slide in. He reached into the boot and felt his money purse, put there for safekeeping, and realized he hadn’t banked the earnings from his accounting work the night before. He opened the purse and fingered the big brass sestertius. With his thumb he felt the emperor’s profile on one side—still Claudius—and ran his fingers over the image of Artemis on the reverse, flanked as always by a stag and a hunting dog. He imagined himself in a crowded marketplace with a purse full of coins, buying whatever he wanted: fried wheat bread, wool toga, a signet ring. Well-dressed, clean-shaven, people nodding respectfully to him.

The sound of slaves scurrying from the sleeping quarters broke his musing. He re-tightened the drawstring of his purse, looped it over his shoulder, slung his wineskin over the other shoulder, finished dressing, and joined the traffic in the hallway. Before heading to breakfast, he turned aside to the steward’s office. The door was ajar, so he pushed in. The steward was inside, examining a scroll. He glanced up at Onesimus with a look of annoyance. “Lost?”

“My earnings,” said Onesimus, sheepish.

“How much?” asked the steward, indifferent.

Onesimus showed him the coin. “One sestertius.”

The steward waved him toward the peculium coffer, which sat on a table in the corner, and went back to his scroll. Onesimus edged over to the coffer. The coin made a muffled jingle as it dropped through the slot and hit the other coins below. The peculium was a slave’s independent earnings, which, at least in theory, at least in part, a paterfamilias considered the slave’s property, held in trust till there was enough to buy freedom. And slaves sometimes managed to do it. But in practice, the master rarely spelled out a slave’s entitlement or the price of freedom in any clear way. And, strictly speaking, Roman law still recognized any money gained by a slave as property of the paterfamilias. So whether the peculium would buy a slave’s freedom depended, in the end, on the master’s whim. If the slave worked hard and behaved well, perhaps it would. Onesimus was skeptical. He saw it for what it was: a vague source of hope meant to keep slaves in line. But he still tried to earn what he could.

Once, when he was younger, he’d tried to keep his earnings, stowing a coin in the locker under his bed, but Pater had found him out; Onesimus hadn’t known about the ledger, and the missing entry was obvious. Pater didn’t beat him—his violence rarely made that much sense. In fact, he laughed, but he also required the coin back. Years later, when Onesimus was better with accounting, forging the ledger had crossed his mind, but in the end, it had felt too risky, so he’d continued dropping his money through the slot.

“I’ll do the ledger.” The steward wasn’t listening. Onesimus found the right scroll and added one sestertius to the tally. Thirty denarii—roughly a month’s wages. Not bad, he thought.

Just after dawn, he arrived at a clearing on the riverbank with a group of Philemon’s house slaves and others from town. The place smelled of mud. Slaves from the villa were already there, shivering in the breeze that whipped up the valley and whistled through the black alders. The twins and a few other slaves were absent, watching over the villa.

Apphia had chatted with a freedman named Archippus the whole way to the river. He was rangy, with dark hair and a long patchy beard, now blown horizontal in the wind. His black tasseled robe cut a stark contrast with the cream-colored garments Apphia and several others wore, and his face looked strained, as if he were relieving himself with some difficulty. The twins had introduced Onesimus to him one Saturday when he was running errands in town. They’d just come from the synagogue. Chaleb had said he was a special butcher who served mostly Jewish people.

From the way Apphia fawned over him, peppering him with generous questions, responding to his answers with saccharine smiles and overdone laughter, Onesimus gathered he was some kind of leader among the Christians. Maybe rubbing shoulders with him made her feel important. She did have a thing for power, thought Onesimus. And status. Which he understood. She’d had neither as a young woman, having been plucked from the dump as an infant—the abandoned fruit of a lovers’ union—and sold to a madame in Perga, who raised her in the brothel. “Twelve mothers and no father,” she used to joke. She said the ladies treated her well enough, slipping her sweets or pocket money like kindly aunts. But at age twelve, as Apphia bloomed, patrons asked after her price, so Madame pressed her into service. When she became pregnant, Madame sold her on. At thirteen, she traveled with her new master to Laodicea, where he put her up for sale again, naked in the slave market, breasts swollen, belly bulging, due any day. And that’s when Pater bought her, intending she be a wet nurse for his firstborn, also due any day. Instead, when Atychia died in childbirth and Apphia’s own child was stillborn, Apphia had ended up as Philemon’s mother.

Apphia peeled herself away from Archippus and approached Onesimus. “Good morning,” she said, kissing both his cheeks. “How are you?”

“Fine,” he said, taking a step back. Last spring, before they made for the mountains, his mother had nagged him for weeks to join up with the Christians. “What’s all this about?”

“A ceremony. You’ll see.” She smiled, but he could tell she was uncomfortable. Then, as if selling something, she said, “Afterward, you’ll get new clothes.” She pulled at her tunic in demonstration, forcing another awkward smile.

Onesimus could see she wouldn’t describe the ceremony, so he nodded, humoring her, and said, “I’m going to find Neos.” He slipped behind some bushes and swallowed two mouthfuls of wine—he’d filled his skin with warm posca at the domus, a step up from the nasty lora—then found Neos among the villa slaves. His fellow shepherd also wore cream-colored garments, like Apphia’s. “Nice tunic,” said Onesimus.

Neos smiled and shook his head.

“Where’s Fela?”

“There,” said Neos, gesturing to a knot of female house slaves.

Onesimus looked over at her. He admired her skin, the color of dark desert sand. They’d always wondered if her parents were from the east, perhaps Syria or Judea. But they’d never know since she too had been abandoned as an infant, plucked from the dump in Laodicea by Marius’s steward. Marius had no lactating slaves at the time, so the steward commissioned Apphia to nurse and raise her. In the same year, Apphia found infant Neos in the Colossian dump and took him in, so the two of them grew up as younger siblings to Onesimus, nursing at Apphia’s breast, playing on the villa estate, working in the garden, unable to remember a time they didn’t love each other. When she was ten, Marius’s steward moved Felicitas back to his domus in Colossae where she served as a house slave.

She stood without talking, and her face looked unusually serious to Onesimus, as if she were bored or impatient with the women around her. It was more like her to chat and laugh, he thought. The eye patch was back, which he hadn’t seen in years. On the wrong eye. “Eye patch?” said Onesimus.

Neos shrugged. He looked at his feet.

When they were young, Onesimus had wondered how well she could see with her crossed eye. One day, when Pater was in a rare good mood, he took all the villa children to the creek to teach them to fish. He brought fishing line, hooks, and nets—Onesimus had caught a brown trout on a hook—but, Pater said, when you’re a soldier in the field, sometimes you have to catch them with your bare hands. He showed them how to step lightly into the shallows, track a fish as it winds in and out of the dappled sunlight, compensate for the distorting effect of the water, and strike at just the right moment. Pater hauled a fish from the water flapping and wriggling, and the kids stared in wonder. They all tried—some came close; Neos ended up falling in—but only Felicitas could repeat the trick. She pulled down her eye patch so it hung around her neck and stepped across the creek on rounded stones, as if she were walking on water, and before long she had a fish in her hands. When one of the boys had ridiculed Neos for his soaked clothing, she beaned him with a river rock from fifteen cubits away. Onesimus never doubted her vision again.

“You say hello to her?”

Neos nodded. “She’s avoiding me.”

“Why?”

Neos shrugged again.

Onesimus glanced around at the others wearing the cream clothes. He counted fifteen. “Where’re these from?” he said, tugging at Neos’s tunic.

“Philemon.” Neos gestured toward a stack of the garments piled on a handcart.

“Why?”

“Well, they’re part of the . . .”

“Part of what?”

“The baptism.”

Baptism. This was the rite of conversion his mother had urged on him in the spring. The wind bit, cutting through his threadbare clothes. Onesimus began to shiver, so he pulled his hood far over his head and jammed his hands under his cloak. His guts churned. He’d tolerate a ritual, but not if it meant conversion. This was not his religion, and this god did not deserve his worship—if indeed he was a god.

Next chapter

Risking crucifixion, Onesimus, an enslaved shepherd, flees his bitter half-brother and master, Philemon, only to find that freedom requires more than mere escape.

“. . . a masterful grasp of the cultural, political and spiritual context of the time . . . The heart of the novel beats for hope, and asks one essential question: what does it mean to truly be free?” —, author of Beyond the Point: A Novel

“. . . one of the best historical novels I’ve ever read on a New Testament figure . . . Mead’s novel utilizes cutting edge scholarship as he weaves a beautiful and inspiring story of hope and faith.” —Demetrius K. Williams, Professor of Comparative Literature and Religious Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukie; Editor of Onesimus Our Brother: Reading Religion, Race and Slavery in Philemon

“Through characters that are vividly complex, defying any easy, moralizing categorization, Mead delivers a thrilling piece of historical fiction that sheds needed light on a tiny letter whose controversial impact has been, and remains, gargantuan.” —, Associate Professor of New Testament Studies, Fuller Theological Seminary

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Story Recap

Onesimus goes to Colossae to attend the ninth-day feast, hosted by the Fellowship of the Crossroads Temple in honor of his deceased father, Pater. Onesimus is a member of the Fellowship and keeps their record of dues received. Before the feast, as he waits to make an offering to Artemis at the temple, Onesimus encounters Philemon, who treats him with contempt. In the temple, Onesimus prays for the recovery of Pater’s missing will.

Philemon and Marius entered the feasting hall, already crowded with members of the temple fellowship. “You made quite a scene back there,” said Marius, still grinning.

“The slave made the scene,” said Philemon, rankled by the incident.

In the middle of the room, three large couches stood in a u-shape—a triclinium. Freeborn men in togas reclined three to a couch and drank mixed wine. A string of long tables with benches surrounded the triclinium near the perimeter of the room, at which sat some thirty men in tunics drinking with relish—freedmen and slaves, segregated by table. A hearth in the corner pumped out heat. The hall pulsed with conversation and bursts of laughter. Marius’s lictors stood against the wall while Philemon and Marius assumed two spots on the triclinium, reclining side-by-side, and a slave placed two goblets of wine on the low table before them.

Soon after, Onesimus entered the hall, bleeding from his knee. Philemon watched him find his seat at one of the slave tables. Onesimus was the only slave from their household who belonged to the fellowship. Another sign of sickening privilege, thought Philemon. Pater had spoiled the boy and left him to fix it.

Just then, the Magister called the room to attention. He was a fat freedman in his fifties with fierce gray bristles budding from his ears and nose. His eyebrows whisked into gray horns like an aging owl. He proposed toasts—to Marius, the patron of the feast; to Pater, their fallen member; to Artemis; to the lares; and to the emperor. Soon after, slaves emerged from the kitchen carrying platters stacked with rare meat, cubed and steaming, and baskets of wheat loaves, all of which they placed on the tables. Philemon’s stomach complained, anticipating food.

Marius shoveled a pile of bloody meat onto his pewter plate. “How’s your wife?”

“She’s well,” said Philemon, wary, his mind straining to understand what lay behind the question.

“Still no children?”

Philemon nodded. Always probing for weakness, he thought.

“How can she be well, then?”

Philemon fixed his gaze on a nick in the table. “There’s more to a woman than producing an heir.”

“There certainly is!” Marius cupped his hand in front of his chest, as if clutching a breast, and cast his eyes around the triclinium, canvassing for approval. Several men obliged with nervous laughter. “But surely you’re concerned. You’ve just become paterfamilias.”

“Of course,” said Philemon, his tone understated.

“What will you do if she remains barren?”

“I don’t know,” said Philemon, continuing to stare at the table, as if doing so might end the conversation. He loved Monica dearly, so he’d never divorce her, and he couldn’t imagine taking a concubine.

“I’ll tell you what you’ll do. You’ll adopt one of my sons. I’ll have a legion of them before long. It would be my honor to donate one to your cause.”

“Or would it be your honor to add my estate to your family’s property?”

Marius threw back his head in booming laughter. When he’d calmed himself, he said, “Speaking of family property, I’ve had the gardens renovated at the villa.”

“How nice,” said Philemon, uninterested. He watched Marius mash a rubbery meat-cube between his brutal jaws. Philemon was tired of his company. They’d spent two hours before the feast at the baths, two hours of Marius’s almost constant boasting: of his new residence in Ephesus, of his retinue of lictors, of his expanding wealth and property, and, as usual, of his father’s funding of the baths from his personal fortune. What he’d left unsaid was that he and his father had squeezed their fortune from the Phrygian people by farming taxes for the Romans, inspiring hatred and fear throughout the region. Marius remained the wealthiest man in Colossae and the largest landowner, despite now residing mostly in the capital of the province, Ephesus.

At the baths, Marius had quoted Virgil repeatedly, just to irritate him. Ah, to be a poet, thought Philemon. But not Virgil. Ovid had lived the life, spinning his masterful web of words in seclusion on the shores of the Pontus Euxinus. Exiled, yes. But for the right reason: for the sake of his love poetry. In my vacant breast, love reigns. It struck Philemon that Jesus might have liked Ovid. Well, perhaps too bawdy, but maybe certain passages. Philemon had loved Ovid since that first boyhood reading from the Metamorphoses. There was something independent about his poetry. Something free. Like Ovid didn’t care what people thought. No kowtowing to authority, no binding attachments, no responsibilities to others. Whereas Marius’s champion, Virgil, seemed to have no voice of his own, bound by tradition, defensive, justifying Roman culture, toady to the emperor. It figured that Pater also praised Virgil, though he doubted his father ever read much of anything. He just liked the fighting, the war. Yes, exile to Tomis wouldn’t be half bad. Maybe he wouldn’t want to be entirely alone. Monica would come, Apphia perhaps, but who else did he need? Away from the pressures of the family line, the family business, managing an estate and the disobedient slaves that came with it.

“I’m giving a tour of the new gardens for the council members in the morning.” Marius commanded the triclinium, his voice loud. “Then hosting lunch. You must join us.” Others nodded their agreement.

Philemon considered for a moment, and then said, “Ah. I appreciate the invitation, but I’m afraid I cannot.”

“Our chef has discovered the most delicious recipe for suckling pig. You must try it. And the political discussion will be excellent.”

Philemon sipped his wine. “It sounds most enjoyable,” he said, lying, “but I have another engagement.”

“And what could engage you on a Sunday morning?” said Marius.

Philemon paused and took another sip of wine, debating inwardly what to say. “I’m also hosting a meeting tomorrow.”

“Who could possibly attend? Everyone will be with me.”

Philemon’s cheeks flushed, and his armpits dampened. “It’s a meeting of the Christians.”

Marius looked up from his plate and faced Philemon, staring at him. “And why would you host that?” The triclinium fell silent, the feasters straining to hear over the surrounding chatter.

Philemon paused again, staring into his wine. There was no going back. As good a time as any, he thought. He drained his goblet. “I’ve become one myself.”

Reclining feasters turned and looked at Philemon, eyebrows raised in disbelief. Marius stared at him in silence, and then his face settled into an easy smile. “You’re joking.”

“No,” said Philemon, his cheeks growing hot. He regretted telling the truth.

Marius’s smile vanished, replaced by a look of distaste. “When did this happen?”

“Several months ago,” said Philemon.

“And what possessed you?”

The entire triclinium listened intently.

“Well,” said Philemon, hesitating. “I met an extraordinary man in Ephesus. Named Paul.”

“Paul,” said Marius. “Paul. Why does that name sound familiar? Is he from Tarsus?”

“Yes,” said Philemon. “You know him?”

“Short man? Says he’s a Jew?”

“He is Jewish,” said Philemon, defensive.

“Well, there seems to be some question about that,” said Marius. “In any case, yes, I know of him. In fact, I just had him put in prison.” A wry smile returned to his face.

“Prison!” said Philemon, his mind reeling. “On what grounds?”

“He and his little friends were disturbing the peace on a festival day. Insulting Artemis in front of her temple. Breaking statues of the goddess. They also refuse to sacrifice to the emperor. They’ve been charged with treason and sacrilege. I’ve probably done him a favor, putting him in prison. The Ephesians would have torn him apart.”

Philemon fell silent, shocked and perplexed. When the father of Marius’s high-society wife, Porcella, had died, Marius had been appointed quaestor of all Asia, allowing him to continue his tax extortions on a grander scale, but imprisoning people was the job of the governor. “How have you put him in prison?”

“So surprised,” said Marius, wearing a look of disgust. “I’ve been appointed governor.”

Philemon stared at him, uncomprehending. Governor? It made better sense of the lictors—Philemon had thought only governors were entitled to the thuggish personal bodyguards, but when Marius showed up with six of his own, Philemon had assumed either he’d hired them to stroke his inflated self-image or simply that Rome had changed the rules to entitle quaestors to them, too. “But what of Governor Silanus?”

Marius rolled his eyes. “Silanus is dead.”

Philemon continued his blank stare, dumb.

Marius sighed. “Are you aware we have a new emperor?”

Those dining around them laughed, and Philemon blushed. “Yes,” he said, “of course. The boy. Nero.”

“An improvement on Claudius, I dare say,” said Marius, scornful. He reached for another piece of bread. “According to one senator, Claudius’s final words were, ‘I think I’ve shit myself.’” Once again, laughter spread around the triclinium, but Philemon remained deadpan. “It seems Agrippina, Nero’s mother, had Silanus poisoned. They say she used the same poison on her husband, Claudius. You have to admire the woman’s vision. Now she whispers in the ear of the son of a god.” Men reclining nearby nodded their approval, though some looked uneasy.

Philemon shuddered. The story left him feeling dirty. And he was still worried by the report about Paul. He’d thought Paul was a citizen, which should have prevented prison before trial. “When is his trial?”

Marius wrenched free a bite of bread from the loaf in his paw and waved his other hand at Philemon. He seemed done with the topic. “So,” said Marius, mouth full of bread, “will you still worship with us?”

Philemon felt his armpits freshly wet. “I’m here, aren’t I?” he said, defensive again.

“Well, in my experience, your kind are rather . . .” Marius paused and waved his hand in a circular motion. “Rather anti-social. Refusing to join the festivals. Refusing to worship traditional gods . . . the emperor,” said Marius. “Like Paul.” His face spread again into a smile.

“I see no reason to be extreme,” said Philemon, clawing back some credibility.

“That’s consolation,” said Marius. “At least some of you are capable of reason.”

When the first course drew to a close, the magister placed a box of smoking incense on each table, along with a shallow wooden dish containing solitary pieces of meat and bread—offerings for the gods. Feasters poured wine into the dishes. The magister then called the room to attention once more, made further toasts, and launched into administrative announcements.

Philemon joined the toasts and felt the effect of the wine. The magister droned on about new officers, arcane points of the fellowship charter, and fines imposed on delinquents. Philemon realized how tired he was. Marius had worn him thin. He noticed Onesimus working his way around the hall with the fellowship coffer and scroll of accounts, collecting dues from those who owed. He reached the opposite side of the triclinium. Philemon studied the boy as he scanned the papyrus register. Strands of silver hair threaded through the slave’s loose curls, odd for such a young man. Philemon noticed how slight he was. Weak. Vulnerable, he thought.

When Onesimus arrived in front of Philemon, he fumbled with the scroll, scanning for his master’s name. Philemon looked away and waved his hand in irritation. “I’m paid up, boy. Move along.” Onesimus blushed and hurried to the next table.

After the magister’s deadening speech, others stood and offered further tributes. Four toasts in, Philemon lost his patience, stood up, and called the feast to attention. “Now,” he said loudly, “I wish to thank you for your kindness to my family, tonight and these past days. My father would be honored by your feasting in his name, and he was certainly honored by the funeral and burial you provided. You are men who hold fast to duty.” A self-congratulatory murmur passed through the crowd. “I hope you will forgive me for retiring early, but the weight of grief has settled on me. Before I depart, may I propose one more toast: to the patron of the feast and the health of all gathered.” Philemon turned to Marius. “‘If we wished to count your exploits and also declare your age, your deeds would outnumber your years.’” He turned again and faced the room. “‘For you, most valiant of heroes, we offer the thanks of our people, and yours is the health that we drink.’” He nodded to Marius and drained his goblet.

The crowd cheered his toast, raised their cups, and drank. Philemon set his empty goblet on the table and gathered himself to depart.

“After toasting from Ovid, you owe me at least to stay through the sweets,” said Marius. “And we’ve barely started the good wine.”

“I’m afraid the past few days have caught up with me,” said Philemon. “Good night, gentlemen.”

With that, Philemon turned and strode toward the exit. Behind him, he heard Marius raise his voice: “You see, this is how it starts. Soon he won’t feast with us at all.”

As Philemon neared the doorway, he again noticed Onesimus across the room, removing the straps of the coffer from his shoulders and setting the box on the floor. Their eyes met, and Onesimus looked away. Philemon passed through the doorway, crossed the bloodied pavement crawling with ants, and started across the road to his domus. At the gate, he heard a burst of laughter from the feasting hall and looked back. He saw Onesimus emerge from the hall and begin walking in his direction. Philemon quickened his stride, passed through the gate, and disappeared inside.

Next chapter

Risking crucifixion, Onesimus, an enslaved shepherd, flees his bitter half-brother and master, Philemon, only to find that freedom requires more than mere escape.

“. . . a masterful grasp of the cultural, political and spiritual context of the time . . . The heart of the novel beats for hope, and asks one essential question: what does it mean to truly be free?” —, author of Beyond the Point: A Novel

“. . . one of the best historical novels I’ve ever read on a New Testament figure . . . Mead’s novel utilizes cutting edge scholarship as he weaves a beautiful and inspiring story of hope and faith.” —Demetrius K. Williams, Professor of Comparative Literature and Religious Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukie; Editor of Onesimus Our Brother: Reading Religion, Race and Slavery in Philemon

“Through characters that are vividly complex, defying any easy, moralizing categorization, Mead delivers a thrilling piece of historical fiction that sheds needed light on a tiny letter whose controversial impact has been, and remains, gargantuan.” —, Associate Professor of New Testament Studies, Fuller Theological Seminary

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Story Recap

At Pater’s funeral feast, Philemon reveals that his father’s will is missing. As the sole heir to Pater’s estate, Philemon uses his discretion to free Onesimus’s mother, Apphia, from slavery but fails to free his half-brother, Onesimus, contrary to Onesimus’s expectations.

After the funeral, Onesimus and Neos had trudged back to the villa in silence, the rest of the country slaves chattering and buzzing, a mobile hive regurgitating the day’s nectar and converting it to honey-sweet gossip. Onesimus knew he’d been the conversation topic.

As the shock faded, he’d tried to make sense of the missing will. Had there been one at all? Pater could have failed to make it. The drunken haze in which his father had spent the last three years of his life was hardly conducive to careful household management. If he had made one, had he willed Onesimus what he’d promised, freedom and a third of the flock, or had those been empty words meant to pacify, false hope to extract obedience? Another idea struck him: maybe the will was sitting on Philemon’s desk, and he’d just refused to read it. Or maybe he destroyed it. If so, he’d taken a serious legal risk, but perhaps an understandable one: a third of the flock was valuable. And if he had destroyed it or “misplaced” it, who would challenge him? Not Onesimus or Apphia—as slaves, they had no legal standing—and beyond them, Philemon was the only one with any claim to the estate.

Back at the villa, Onesimus had taken first watch and then tossed in his cot most of the night, endlessly analyzing Philemon’s speech at the feast and strategizing how to navigate his new master. He dragged through his work the next day, a thorough grooming of the flock now they’d returned from the wilds, and in the late afternoon, he bathed under the cold-water spigot, shaved himself, and changed into a fresh dark tunic, preparing to head back to Colossae. He was expected at the ninth-day feast in honor of his father, hosted by the Fellowship of the Crossroads Temple.

Joining the fellowship had felt like a passage to manhood. From a young age, Apphia had taught him numbers. He’d count autumn pears picked in the orchard, spring carrots pulled in the garden, and summer blackberries snuck from brambles behind the villa while avoiding work. When Apphia reconciled the villa accounts, she’d invite him onto her lap. She taught him the counting board and showed him the shapes of letters and numerals. She watched him imitate her figures with a reed pen on his own small papyrus and eventually scratch them onto the scroll of accounts itself, once he’d got the gist.

One morning, when he was thirteen, Lupus—Marius’s freedman in charge of tax collection—had been assessing Pater’s property at the villa. Onesimus stood in the sheepfold next to Voskos, the aging head shepherd, who stood next to Pater. The edgy flock clustered behind them for inspection. With his wax tablet and stylus at the ready, Lupus queried Pater, who looked to Voskos for answers: number of slaves in the sheepfold, number of dogs, size of the flock. After Voskos recited the inventory, Onesimus whispered in his ear: two ewe lambs and a wether had been slaughtered for market that morning, which shrank the tax bill. As Voskos stated the correction, crediting the junior shepherd, Lupus glared at Onesimus. But Pater had studied his son, a glint of pride in his eye.

The next week, Pater had brought him to a feast at the temple and stood by as the curator led him through initiation rites: a recitation of the fellowship rules, a vow of allegiance, and prayers to Artemis, the emperor, and the lares, the neighborhood gods. Then the Curator looped the leather strap of a coffer over his head, filled the inkwell, handed him the scroll of accounts and a pen, and sent him around to collect dues: funds to supply their feasts and a basic funeral for each member—for what could be worse than dying without respect, forgotten by the world?

Onesimus had beamed, puffing out his skinny chest, proud of his new duties in the world of men. As he took in money from freeborns, freedmen, and other slaves, he felt good enough, and, in a way, equal to them all. At the villa he was a tool to be used. But at the fellowship, for the first time, he had status, as if he were free. Now, as he prepared for the ninth-day feast in honor of his dead father, that freedom seemed empty, gutted by Philemon’s decision the night before. The evening’s service to the fellowship felt like slave’s work in different guise.

Outside the temple, fleshy entrails smoldered on a brazier in the middle of the pavement. A slave prodded the grilling organs while flames reached through the grate like the hands of hungry prisoners. Salted flour, splashes of wine, and an oblong patch of dried blood coated the pavement. In the middle of the patch, a shirtless blood-spattered slave hacked at the carcass of a bull with a long-handled axe. The metallic smell of blood hung in the chilly air. The slave had already removed the choicest meat to the temple kitchen and now separated chunks of flesh to be sold at market.

Onesimus took in the columns of the temple. Before entering the feast, he would worship, he thought. Artemis hadn’t granted his prayer at the funeral, but perhaps she would have compassion on him now, in light of his mistreatment. He ascended the stone steps, two at a time, and crossed the portico between columns, but as he made for the doorway into the temple, a cluster of bulky men emerged from the shadows to block his way. They wore the segmented armor of legionaries under red woolen saga, and on their left shoulders rested fasces—bundles of birch rods and an axe head bound together by red straps, symbolizing Roman imperium and a magistrate’s power of execution. The leader put a hand on Onesimus’s chest and shoved him backward. “What’s your business here, slave?” he said, his voice gravelly.

Flustered and struggling to find words, Onesimus said, “Worship. And the feast.”

“The feast?” The leader raised his eyebrows.

“I’m . . . I’m part of the fellowship,” said Onesimus, stuttering like Neos.

The leader tilted his head slightly and squinted at him. “The governor is offering,” he said. “Wait your turn.” He pushed Onesimus back onto the portico.

Onesimus turned away from the temple, toward the pavement, and scuttled across the portico to the top of the steps he’d just ascended, his flushed face fading to its normal olive color. Governor? Since when did the governor come to Colossae? He looked out at the bloodied slave still chopping at the bull carcass with his axe. One of the temple cooks emerged from the kitchen door and began across the pavement, barking at the slave. The slave rested the axe head on the ground and looked on with a blank face while the cook continued his verbal lashing, pointing at the ragged remains of the bull and then spreading his hands in frustration.

Onesimus looked away, shifting his shoulders to readjust the uncomfortable neckline of his tunic. What would he pray? He studied the joints between the marble floor panels. He’d never learned formal prayers, so he’d always improvised, prayers of need mostly, but sometimes of praise and gratitude. Tonight, it would be need. He’d pray for Pater’s will to be found, he thought. If there was any hope of freedom before he was old, it was in that will. If indeed it existed.

He felt a shove in the back, and suddenly he was tumbling down the sharp-edged marble steps. The boiled barley cake he’d brought for the goddess spilled from his cloak onto the ground and split into pieces. “Out of the way,” said the lead soldier as he descended the steps with his five brawny companions. They passed Onesimus, who cowered on the pavement, cuts on his knees and elbows beginning to throb. Two men in togas followed behind. As they descended the steps and removed the fabric of their togas from over their heads, Onesimus saw their faces: Philemon and his friend, Marius, a giant of a man, taller than Philemon by a head. The two men stopped, and Onesimus watched his master’s pudgy face recognize him and convert to a glare.

Marius looked back and forth between them with a fool’s grin. “It’s your brother!” he said, almost laughing.

“Why are you here, slave?” said Philemon, emphasizing the label.

Onesimus’s cheeks flushed again. Before he could answer, Marius addressed him, still grinning and nodding toward the soldiers: “You’ve met my lictors. Aren’t they charming?” Onesimus didn’t know what to say. Marius chuckled and turned to Philemon. “Is he mute?”

“Why are you here?” Philemon repeated, staring down at him, his voice now tinged with anger.

Why was he here? Granted, it had been months since Onesimus attended a feast at the temple, but had Philemon really forgotten he was part of the fellowship? His cheeks now felt warm, not from embarrassment but anger. Onesimus got to his feet, straightened his tunic, and gave Philemon a steely look. “For the feast.”

Philemon stared back at him, confusion flashing across his face.

“I’m a member,” said Onesimus, his tone sharp.

Philemon’s face showed signs of comprehension, followed by disdain.

“Insolent,” said Marius, looking down at Philemon. “You’ll let that stand?”

The frozen look on his master’s face reminded Onesimus of a child unsure how he’s failed his father.

“Would you like my men to handle him?” said Marius.

Philemon stared blankly at Marius and then looked back at Onesimus, narrowing his eyes, lingering on his slave’s face for several uncomfortable moments. Finally, he sighed and shook his head. “Just stay out of the way,” he said as he began across the pavement toward the feasting hall. Marius followed a few steps behind, muffling laughter with his meaty hand.

Onesimus watched the two men go, rubbing a sore spot on his elbow. He stooped to collect the broken barley cake and stuffed the pieces into his cloak pocket. He climbed the steps again, this time gingerly, and entered the dim cella, the gods’ dwelling place, with its vaulted ceiling and expansive marble floor. He hushed his echoing footsteps to a shuffle and inhaled the holy blend of incense and dust suspended in the still air. He felt small.

Onesimus shuffled to the back of the cella, and stood in front of the altar—a rectangular stone table the length of five people. Behind the altar stood four statues on pedestals. The two central ones were life-sized and made of polished white marble. The first was Artemis, flanked by a buck and a dog, bow and quiver on her shoulder, and the second, beside her, the Genius Augusti—the spirit of the emperor—Caesar Augustus with a toga draped over his head in reverence, one hand extended in a welcoming gesture, the other offering a shallow libation dish. Worship of the emperor had always seemed suspect to Onesimus. Augustus’s power certainly evoked a god: at his command, armies of thousands would march, kings were ousted, nations crushed. But he’d died. Was this, then, not a man? A powerful one, yes, but surely a man and not a god? Though Artemis was birthed, she would never die.

To either side of the marble statues stood the neighborhood lares—diminutive bronze deities dressed in frilly tunics, charged with guarding their quarter of the city. Each androgynous lar balanced on the tiptoes of one foot, as if performing an intricate dance. They held horns of wine above their heads in one hand and libation dishes at chest-height in the other.

Onesimus draped his hood over his head in imitation of the genius, his stomach beginning to unclench. On the altar sat a basket of whole barley cakes, a small jug of wine beside an already-brimming libation dish, two flickering oil lamps, a bowl of water, a bronze knife, and a lit censor, its sweet smoke curling upward. Onesimus poured more wine from the jug, overflowing the dish and painting a red blotch on the altar. He placed the broken pieces of his cake in the basket and regained his composure. He closed his eyes and listened to himself inhale, a deep breath that filled his lungs and lifted his shoulders. The smell of frankincense calmed him further. He exhaled through his mouth with a sharp sigh. “Goddess, forgive my broken offering,” he whispered. With his eyes still closed, he inhaled again, this time into his belly, and remembered his plan. He prayed again, his voice hushed: “Reveal my father’s will.”

Next chapter

Risking crucifixion, Onesimus, an enslaved shepherd, flees his bitter half-brother and master, Philemon, only to find that freedom requires more than mere escape.

“. . . a masterful grasp of the cultural, political and spiritual context of the time . . . The heart of the novel beats for hope, and asks one essential question: what does it mean to truly be free?” —, author of Beyond the Point: A Novel

“. . . one of the best historical novels I’ve ever read on a New Testament figure . . . Mead’s novel utilizes cutting edge scholarship as he weaves a beautiful and inspiring story of hope and faith.” —Demetrius K. Williams, Professor of Comparative Literature and Religious Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukie; Editor of Onesimus Our Brother: Reading Religion, Race and Slavery in Philemon

“Through characters that are vividly complex, defying any easy, moralizing categorization, Mead delivers a thrilling piece of historical fiction that sheds needed light on a tiny letter whose controversial impact has been, and remains, gargantuan.” —, Associate Professor of New Testament Studies, Fuller Theological Seminary

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Story Recap

Before they return to Colossae from the summer pastures in the mountains, Neos, an enslaved junior shepherd, reveals to Onesimus and the other shepherds that the last time he was with Felicitas—a female slave from another household in Colossae—they discussed the prospect of marriage.

Felicitas heard a knock at the slaves’ door. She dropped her scrubbing brush into a bucket of water, got up from her knees, and straightened her tunic, which was fastened high on her ribcage by a red fabric belt, accentuating her breasts. Thick chestnut hair flowed to the middle of her back, all but a few errant strands gathered by a kerchief matching her belt. Jewels of sweat glistened at her temples and dripped down her cheeks. She crossed the wet floor on bare tiptoes, opened the door, and saw Apphia and Monica standing on the step. The women wore somber woolen clothing. “I’m washing floors,” she said, preempting their invitation.

“I thought you already had permission,” said Apphia, sounding frustrated.

Felicitas wavered, trying to ignore the panicky tremor in her stomach. Her left eye drifted toward her nose, making it hard to focus, and she felt her head begin to ache. “I do have permission,” she said, still wavering. In fact, the week before, Marius’s chief kitchen slave had assigned her the Saturnalia shopping.

“You said you’d come,” said Apphia, her tone scolding. “You need to shop sometime.”

“All right,” she said, and gave a sharp sigh. She hated leaving work undone. “Give me a moment.” Felicitas hurried back to the slaves’ quarters. She washed her hands, despite their having been in soapy water for the past hour, changed into a longer tunic, and refastened her red belt, fussing with it till the fabric laid smooth. She removed the kerchief from her head, picked up her hairbrush, and looked in the tiny metal mirror. Her skin was the same bronze as the mirror. The color of a shield, Neos had once told her. Or a knife, she’d thought. Or fine wood, he’d added, admiration in his voice. Or rusty nails, she’d thought. Or a cooking pot, he’d suggested, a stupid grin on his face. She’d smiled and shoved him.

She looked again. Her face seemed invisible, erased by the bronze of the mirror, as if her dark hair and white teeth were floating. Floating eyes. One of them drifting again, like it wanted to escape. She hated her left eye. The last time she complained to Neos about it, he kissed her eyelid and told her he loved it. She told him it never wandered when they were together, and so he didn’t know what he was talking about. He laughed and said he loved it either way.

She brushed her hair and took a deep breath, then retied the kerchief and fastened a patch over the uncooperative eye—the only thing she hated more than the eye itself. As a child, Apphia had made her wear a patch over her strong eye, so the wayward one would strengthen. But when she was fifteen, she took it off and never wore it again. Until three nights ago, on the couch of her master, Marius. And every night since. She felt panic closing her throat, so she inhaled, long and slow, then metered out a breath through puckered lips. Better. She adjusted her kerchief, added a matching shawl, slipped on her sandals, grabbed a shopping basket from the kitchen, and met the women outside.

Apphia stared at the patch. “Wrong eye,” she said.

Felicitas didn’t look at her. “Don’t,” she said.

“Don’t?” said Apphia.

Felicitas waved her hand, again refusing to look at her.

Apphia stared at her for a moment and exchanged a look with Monica. She took Felicitas’s arm and Monica’s with her other arm, and they set off down the hill, past the temple, toward the market, Apphia and Monica chatting about the funeral, about Saturnalia, about what they needed at the market, Felicitas paying no attention.

Two springs ago, Marius had seen her spinning wool with another slave-girl and taken no notice. But last week, he’d seen them in the courtyard garden as they danced the syrtos, singing, imagining their wedding day, unaware he lurked in the peristyle, watching, like a hunter spying game. “A shame to marry so young,” he’d said with a hungry smile, paying no attention to her dance partner. She’d gained curves and flesh since he’d seen her last, but his attention still surprised her.

That night he’d made her dance for him in his quarters. Not a wedding dance. Something she wasn’t proud of, something she’d seen older girls do once, their faces serious, then laughing. Something lewd. As a young girl, she’d wondered how it would feel to dance like that for a man, his eyes on her. Now she knew; it felt sickening. He’d made her cover the drifting eye with a patch—“Beautiful and ugly,” he’d said, laughing—and made her promise never to be in public without it. And then he’d been all over her, groping and pressing, smothering her with his massive frame and hard pot belly, his rancid breath suffocating. When she was twelve, there’d been a wealthy visitor to the domus who used her every night for a dreaded month, but she always knew he’d leave. This was different; she saw no end to it. She wished she could wash her hands again. Who was she that she drew such horrible men? Neos loved her, she reminded herself. Neos loved her.

“Felicitas?” Apphia was almost shouting.

“Sorry,” said Felicitas, her stomach in knots, her head throbbing. “What . . . what did you say?”

Apphia shook her head. “I asked what you need.”

Felicitas looked around, anxious, as if waking from a nightmare, unsure how to answer.

“From the market,” said Apphia. “What you need from the market.” They were already at the commercial agora, on the flats, west of the city wall. The square was alive with open-air stalls and the pulsing cacophony of traders hawking wares. Streams of people flowed between stalls, and swirling aromas of spices, grilled meats, fried barley bread, aging fish, and salted olives wafted in their nostrils.

Felicitas hadn’t noticed their journey down the hill at all. “Produce and meat,” she said, still flustered. “And fabric.”

“What’s wrong?” said Apphia, her tone shifting to parental concern.

“Nothing,” said Felicitas, stuffing down worry and confusion, commanding her face to relax. Apphia stared at her again. Finally, she turned to enter the market, and Felicitas felt relieved to escape her gaze.

They walked through the market, passing between vendors selling eggs, hard cheese from sheep’s milk, fresh goat cheese, blood sausage, and stinking cuts of pork, beef, and mutton suspended from wooden posts, which also propped up awnings and tents overhead. They stopped to order meat for their households, then carried on through the market, the smells of ground spices—cumin, coriander, pepper, saffron, cinnamon, and fennel seed—hanging in the narrow alleys between stalls. They passed vendors selling dried lentils and chickpeas, and arrived at those with fresh produce. Apphia and Monica stopped to examine broad beans in a wicker basket, while Felicitas spied a tub of shiny purple carrots resembling male members. She shuddered, then refocused on a basket of cabbage, each orb a skull with leafy green hair. The pudgy, unshaven proprietor finished with a customer and turned to the women. A smile of recognition broke across his face. “Ladies. How nice to see you.”

“Demetrios,” said Apphia, smiling back.

“Sorry to hear of your loss,” he said, his face appropriately serious.

Apphia nodded.

“But I hear you’re a freedwoman.”

“Not yet,” she said, tugging at the hair on her unshaven head. “Soon.”

“Congratulations.” The vendor cast an admiring glance at Felicitas. “And who is this lovely young woman?”

“You’ve met Felicitas,” said Apphia.

“Felicitas,” he said, recognition dawning. “The eye patch. My apologies.”

Felicitas nodded and smiled, blushed, then looked at the ground, wishing she were somewhere else.

He turned to Apphia. “I should introduce my son.” He gestured to a skinny teen with immaculate hair, who was cutting stalks of cardoon in a corner of the stall. “A handsome lad, freeborn. One day he’ll own the business.” The boy snuck an embarrassed glance at Felicitas, then continued his work in silence.

Before the vendor could make the introduction, Apphia said, “I’m afraid she’s spoken for. A young man in our household.”

“A slave?”

Apphia nodded.

“Surely his prospects aren’t as good as my boy’s.”

“Well, no. But what can you say to love?”

Felicitas squirmed. She turned sideways, oblique to the stall, as if to run away. The tremor in her stomach returned and grew. She knew Neos was back from the mountains. In June, when he’d come for supplies, she’d made an excuse to visit Pater’s villa. She told her mistress that Apphia had a new spindle that could help her work—a half-truth; Apphia’d had it for months, and she’d already taught Felicitas to use it. She had dinner with Neos in the slaves’ dining hall. They walked in the gardens and the fields where they grew up, and he finally mentioned marriage. For at least a year, she’d longed for that moment. But now she was avoiding him. Fluttering joy had become tortured shame, a problem with no solution.

Apphia noticed her discomfort and said, “I’m sorry, dear. Talking like you aren’t here.” Felicitas stuttered a produce order, and the women continued through the market, browsing trinkets and baubles fit for Saturnalia gifts while heading for the fabric stalls. Apphia and Monica stopped to admire some purple cloth. Across the stall, Felicitas browsed fine fabrics in red, orange, and yellow, trying to submerge her twisted feelings in a task. She stopped at a sheet of thin tangerine cloth, stroking it with her fingers, then motioned to the merchant. “Three sheets of this, please.”

Apphia and Monica came over as the merchant began removing the fabric from his display and rolling it for sale. “Silk?” said Apphia, with a note of surprise.

Felicitas blushed and said nothing. She smoothed her tunic with her hands.

“What are your plans for it?” said Apphia.

Still pink in the face, Felicitas said, “Master of the house told me to buy it.” She purposed not to say more, focusing her attention on the transaction with the merchant.

Apphia exchanged another glance with Monica.

After the purchase, they strolled on, watching people in the market. A young mother passed with her baby strapped to her back, the child gurgling and bubbling as she gnawed on her own fist. “Look at this little ray of sunshine!” said Monica. The woman smiled and stopped. Apphia and Monica chatted with her, fawning over the child, while Felicitas stood and watched, a pace removed, adjusting her eye patch.

As they parted with the young mother, Apphia looked at Monica. “Baby news?”

“Afraid not,” said Monica. “When Philemon’s home, we . . . we work on it,” she said, offering a tired smile. “But still nothing.” She looked deflated. “To be honest, I’ve given up.”

“I’m so sorry,” said Apphia. “We’ll keep praying.”

Monica nodded, but Felicitas knew she was just being agreeable.

They continued to stroll, and another baby caught Monica’s eye, this one a little boy. Again, the mother stopped to indulge them while Felicitas stood and watched. Over her shoulder, Apphia said, “Fela, he looks like Neos. When he was a baby.”

Felicitas forced a smile.

“A little Neos,” Apphia said to the child, her voice a tender singsong. Monica thanked the mother, and the three restarted their walk through the market. Apphia linked arms with Felicitas and said, “Cute, no? Bet one of yours will look just like him.”

Felicitas looked away, color draining from her face.

“What is wrong, dear?”

“Nothing,” said Felicitas, looking at the ground.

“Come now. Every time we mention Neos, you look like you want to run. Did you argue?”

“No,” said Felicitas. “I haven’t seen him.”

“Having second thoughts?”

“Not exactly . . .”

“What, then?”

Felicitas stared into the distance, finally yielding—it would come out soon enough. “Marius has taken me,” she said, “to his couch.”

Apphia and Monica stopped walking and turned to face her, jaws slack.

“His first night back,” she said. “And every night since.” Her own jaw tightened. “He’s taking me to Ephesus. After Saturnalia. As his concubine.” She felt hard inside.

“Oh, Fela,” said Apphia.

The two older women wrapped arms around her, but she couldn’t absorb the comfort. Her good eye lost focus, and she felt the covered eye drift toward her nose under the patch.

Next chapter

Risking crucifixion, Onesimus, an enslaved shepherd, flees his bitter half-brother and master, Philemon, only to find that freedom requires more than mere escape.

“. . . a masterful grasp of the cultural, political and spiritual context of the time . . . The heart of the novel beats for hope, and asks one essential question: what does it mean to truly be free?” —, author of Beyond the Point: A Novel

“. . . one of the best historical novels I’ve ever read on a New Testament figure . . . Mead’s novel utilizes cutting edge scholarship as he weaves a beautiful and inspiring story of hope and faith.” —Demetrius K. Williams, Professor of Comparative Literature and Religious Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukie; Editor of Onesimus Our Brother: Reading Religion, Race and Slavery in Philemon

“Through characters that are vividly complex, defying any easy, moralizing categorization, Mead delivers a thrilling piece of historical fiction that sheds needed light on a tiny letter whose controversial impact has been, and remains, gargantuan.” —, Associate Professor of New Testament Studies, Fuller Theological Seminary

Want a different chapter?

Table of Contents

Enjoying the story? Subscribe or upgrade to paid.

Subscribe now

Customize which emails you receive here.

Story Recap

At Pater’s funeral feast, Philemon reveals that his father’s will is missing. As the sole heir to Pater’s estate, Philemon uses his discretion to free Onesimus’s mother, Apphia, from slavery but fails to free his half-brother, Onesimus, contrary to Onesimus’s expectations.

Philemon stood in his father’s old room, in front of a wooden chest, wearing only an under-tunic. As a house slave rummaged in the chest, Philemon glanced again at the floor mosaic with four frames. Each frame had a stylized picture—a temple with three pillars, a wine goblet, a cavalryman atop a horse, and a flock of three sheep—the things his father professed to care most about: worship, wine, war, and wool. Conspicuously absent was an image of family, which had never quite fit his father’s picture, thought Philemon. A wine goblet in every frame might have been truer.

Murals covered the walls with similar images, punctured by nooks cradling oil lamps that lit the room. Sheets of purple wool, dull with age, billowed downward from the ceiling between cedar beams, and a narrow sleeping couch stood at the far end of the room under a window with closed shutters. The fire sizzled and snapped on the hearth, warming Philemon’s shins.

The slave finally stood up again, extending a cream-colored toga in front of his new master, a hopeful look on his face. “Dingy,” said Philemon. His father had dealt in wool, so he’d expected a chest of immaculate togas, too white to look at. Instead, its contents were graying and frayed. His father’s standards had dropped more than he’d imagined, and there was clearly work to do with the laundry slaves. New master, new rules. The slave replaced the rejected toga, retrieved another from the chest, and held it up, but Philemon just frowned and shook his head.

He smiled at Apphia as she entered the room. She wore a dark tunic with a linen belt, and her hair up. Still all business, he thought. A lesser slave might have shirked after yesterday’s promise of freedom, but here she stood, proving his choice: there was none more deserving. She looked thin and tired, drained of the woman who’d raised him—then, she’d been radiant and lush, his wet nurse, stand-in for his dead mother, and the same to half the slaves on the estate. Despite her sixty years and increasing frailty, she retained a matriarchal elegance, an almost regal poise, he thought. A grace. And her eyes still sparkled. Yes, the same eyes, he thought, smiling at her. She was one of the rare good choices his father had made.

“Morning, sir,” she said.

“Sir?”

“Expecting ‘master’?” she said.

“Hardly,” said Philemon, unsure what to make of her mood.

“Well, I’m not free yet.”

“True enough,” he said. “After Saturnalia, perhaps.”

She nodded, glancing around. “Taken your father’s room already.”

She’s sensitive, he thought. He’d effectively taken her husband’s room, which was sometimes hers too. He hadn’t considered that, but, hard as it might be, she’d need to accept it: he was the paterfamilias, now. “No need to wait,” he said, his voice gentle. “It’s the ninth day. We’ve performed the rites.”

Apphia said nothing, but her body tensed, then relaxed again.

The house slave held up the whitest toga yet, to which Philemon finally assented. The slave closed the chest, laid the toga on top, dabbed his forehead with his cuff, and left the room. Philemon settled onto the couch, head on one of the upholstered arms, feather-stuffed pillows under his neck and back, heat from the fire now diffusing over the length of his body. Apphia draped a towel across his chest and then a smaller one on top of the first. Her hands slurped as she warmed olive oil between them and then massaged it into Philemon’s mourning beard, causing his neck and round cheeks to glow chartreuse. He closed his eyes, inhaled deeply, and released a slow, audible breath, absorbing Apphia’s motherly touch. After wiping her hands on the small towel, she began passing a bronze razor back and forth over a whetstone. “How are the accounts?”

“Still sorting them. But so far, not good. Coffers seem low, records scrambled. He lost his grip toward the end.”

Apphia continued to sharpen the razor. “Will you be home more?”

“I think so,” he said. “I’ll need to train someone. For the traveling.”

Apphia shifted to a strop, running the blade back and forth along the thick leather band anchored to the head of the couch. “Monica will like that,” she said, still swiping the blade. “What about Onesimus?” she said, eyes fixed on her work.

Always Onesimus, he thought, opening his eyes again, scanning her face for meaning. “What about him?” A fly landed on his arm. He slapped it with his other hand, then swept the crushed insect onto the floor.

“For the traveling.”

“A shepherd?” When Pater returned from war twenty years ago, he assigned Philemon the traveling part of the wool business: collecting payments, establishing new clients, checking on deliveries, attending guild meetings, seeing to relationships with local governments and Roman officials. At first, Philemon found it exciting, a privilege to visit the chief cities of western Asia—Laodicea, Hierapolis, Apamea, Antiochia, Ephesus. But eventually he realized the job was really to keep him away; a steward had done the work for years when Pater was off at war, so it wasn’t that the job needed filling. It was that his father could barely stand a holiday feast with his son, let alone side-by-side work on the family business. In any case, thought Philemon, such travel was hardly work for a twenty-year-old shepherd slave.

“Why not?” she said. “Voskos used to help with it. He was head shepherd. Onesimus is bright. Good with numbers. He knows the wool.”

“Wool and numbers, maybe,” said Philemon. “Buyers, dealers, officials. They’re another matter. The job is people. He still struggles with his little crew of boys.”

She tensed again, took a shallow inhale and parted her lips, as if to respond, but stopped short.

“Yes?” said Philemon.

Apphia shook her head. “Nothing.”

For a few moments, Philemon studied her face, which had refocused on the moving blade, then closed his eyes again, now less relaxed. It was understandable she’d advocate for Onesimus; he was her son. But her judgment was skewed. Admittedly, he was bright, but he was still a boy, and mostly a brat. Philemon found the attitude of most vernae—slaves born on the estate—far too lax, but Onesimus took his privilege to an extreme: leaving chores undone, covering the failings of his boy-shepherd crew, filling his skins with wine so fine no other slave would dare to drink it, expecting special treatment from Pater. Which he got.

Apphia stopped stropping. She placed the fingers of her left hand below Philemon’s temple, above his graying sideburn, and gently pulled the skin up toward his scalp. She then scraped downward with the angled blade, edging across his cheek. After a few deft strokes, she wiped the blade on the small towel, leaving a streak of yellow oil and severed whiskers.

“How’s Paul?” she asked, returning to the strop.

Philemon had met Paul while on business in Ephesus, a diminutive Jewish man preaching in the market, dark hair and chest-length beard sweeping about his face, spraying spit toward the crowd and jabbing the air with gnarled brown fingers. Philemon stopped and listened for a while, judging him a crank. He’d heard of the faith Paul preached—an eastern cult centered on a man named Jesus. It’d even come to his household in Colossae: his wife, Monica, and Apphia took it on, gathering to worship on Sundays, listening to a man named Epaphras preach the “way,” as they called it. Pater had hated the upstart faith, endlessly badgering Apphia for her credulity and counting it another strike against Monica, alongside her barrenness. Pater’s opposition had made Philemon curious—if his father hated it, there was probably something in it—but he’d concluded it was a religion of women and slaves, not that of a paterfamilias-in-waiting.

So he’d listened a while, for entertainment. He couldn’t deny the man had zeal and a way with words, but he seemed to spout nonsense. Philemon had made to move on when a man from the crowd charged at Paul, calling him an affront to Artemis, goddess of Ephesus, aiming to knock him over. The preacher raised his hands and shouted, “Stop!” The assailant sprawled backwards. Paul had done it without touching him, deflecting him as if by an invisible barrier. Twice more the man charged, and twice more Paul repelled him with only words and raised hands. As the man lay on the ground for the third time, Paul ordered a spirit to leave him, which made him howl and writhe, then, all at once, sit still, looking confused, saliva dribbling from the corner of his mouth. “The Lord has set you free,” Paul said. He led the dazed man to a spigot at the butcher’s stall and cleaned his wounds, the crowd migrating with them, magnetized. Philemon followed. Paul then explained the episode to the crowd: the Jewish God’s kingdom—God’s rule renewed—has come in power through Jesus, the Messiah, Jew from Galilee, risen from the dead. “The gospel,” he called his message. The good news. Jesus had knocked him over, Paul said, and shown him his Jewish God was, in fact, God of all, Jew and Greek alike.

Inexplicably, Paul’s message began to make sense, as if the deed of power, the exorcism, taught Philemon a foreign tongue all at once. He finally understood the strange little man. Despite completing his business in Ephesus, Philemon lingered for the next week, spending from the fifth hour to the tenth—the midday rest—in the hall of a man named Tyrannus, a patron of Greek philosophy whom Paul’s message had persuaded. Philemon ate the midday meal with the Christians, the “church,” as Paul called them, and absorbed Paul’s teaching on Jesus and the way. The following Sunday, Paul baptized him in the Marnas River, among the lilies and wild celery, and at their worship gathering, Philemon gave ten aurei to the church coffer—a year’s wages for a laborer—making sure everyone saw. The gift was met with the wide eyes and gaping mouths he’d hoped for. Afterward, he ate bread and drank wine with Paul and Epaphras, the Colossian preacher who told him about the gatherings in the Lycus Valley. In Hieropolis and Laodicea, the church met in homes of wealthy brothers and sisters, but in Colossae, said Epaphras, they met outdoors, in the agora or by the river. Paul asked Philemon if he owned land, a domus. “Son of a landowner,” he said, embarrassed to identify with his father. When Paul suggested he might host the Colossian church, Philemon’s cheeks flushed with deeper shame as he related Pater’s hostility to the faith. “I doubt he’d agree,” he confessed. Nonetheless, he committed to discussing it with his father. When he finally did, Pater spurned the idea, mocking his new faith.

“Paul?” said Philemon, opening his eyes and remembering Apphia’s question. “It’s been weeks since I was in Ephesus. But last time he seemed well. Business was good. Still preaching.” Philemon paused as Apphia returned to the shaving.

“Good,” said Apphia, lifting the blade from his cheek, her face earnest.

“And now Pater’s passed, we can host the church.” Philemon stared at the ceiling, rubbing the pads of his thumb and forefinger together.

“I hadn’t thought of that,” said Apphia, reflective. She’d finished the right side of his face and was now working on the delicate skin of his throat.

“Archippus and I have planned our first meeting for tomorrow, in fact. At the domus. In the atrium. I’ll have the rest of the slaves baptized beforehand.”

Apphia jerked, nicking his Adam’s apple.

Philemon cried out.

“Sorry!” she said, contrite.

He pushed away her shaving hand and sat up. “What’s wrong with you, today?” He gave her a stern look as blood trickled from the wound.

Her eyes flashed. “Don’t be childish,” she said, laying him back down. “It’s a tiny cut.” She dipped a corner of the small towel in a bowl of vinegar on the table beside them and pressed it into the wound. “I am sorry,” she said again. “It’s just . . . ” Her statement trailed off.

“What?”

“Well. Do you think they’re all ready? The slaves?”

Again Onesimus. The boy had been as resistant to the new faith as Pater had. “Don’t you want them to convert?” he said, playing along with her vagueness.

“Of course,” she said. “But will they? Really? If you force them?”

“Sometimes,” said Philemon, his patience tested, “slaves must be made to do right.”

She looked him in the eye, jaw clenched, but said nothing. She lifted the towel, placed it back on his chest, and returned to stropping, her strokes quicker and firmer.

“Onesimus will be fine,” he said. “The boy just needs guidance.”

She stopped stropping, stared at the leather for a moment, then looked Philemon in the eye again, her cheeks flushed pink. “You should have freed him.”

Philemon’s eyes widened. He hadn’t expected this. He examined her face. “I think you greatly overestimate him,” he said, maintaining his calm. “His competence. More important, his faithfulness.”

Apphia went back to stropping, her strokes aggressive. “He was the man’s son,” she said without looking up, her tone sharp.

“That doesn’t guarantee privilege,” he said, trying to hide his irritation. It certainly hadn’t in his own case.

“Why do you hate him?” said Apphia. “It blinds you.” She stopped stropping and set down the blade. “You’re to love,” she said, her face stern. “And forgive. If there’s anything to forgive.” She picked up the blade and attacked the strop with new vigor. “We bear with your flaws every day.”

“All the boy’s had is forgiveness,” he said, his eyes rolling upward. “He’s never punished.” Philemon softened. “I’ll consider training the boy. But he doesn’t deserve freedom.”

“Pater would have thought differently,” said Apphia, her voice catching in her throat.

Maybe, thought Philemon. But he would have been wrong. And in the end, it didn’t matter: the fool didn’t leave a will.

Next chapter

Risking crucifixion, Onesimus, an enslaved shepherd, flees his bitter half-brother and master, Philemon, only to find that freedom requires more than mere escape.

“. . . a masterful grasp of the cultural, political and spiritual context of the time . . . The heart of the novel beats for hope, and asks one essential question: what does it mean to truly be free?” —, author of Beyond the Point: A Novel

“. . . one of the best historical novels I’ve ever read on a New Testament figure . . . Mead’s novel utilizes cutting edge scholarship as he weaves a beautiful and inspiring story of hope and faith.” —Demetrius K. Williams, Professor of Comparative Literature and Religious Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukie; Editor of Onesimus Our Brother: Reading Religion, Race and Slavery in Philemon

“Through characters that are vividly complex, defying any easy, moralizing categorization, Mead delivers a thrilling piece of historical fiction that sheds needed light on a tiny letter whose controversial impact has been, and remains, gargantuan.” —, Associate Professor of New Testament Studies, Fuller Theological Seminary

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Story Recap

Onesimus and his enslaved mother, Apphia—Pater’s former concubine—walk in Pater’s funeral procession. Apphia walks with the dignitaries at the rear of the procession, but Onesimus’s half-brother, Philemon, forces Onesimus to walk with his fellow slaves instead. During the procession, Onesimus recalls a night when his drunken father, Pater, physically abused him and Apphia.

Freeborns and freedmen sat on benches at long tables in the dining room of the domus—a funeral feast was no time for reclining on couches, especially when the deceased was a soldier. The main course of pork in sweet wine sauce had been cleared. A shift of house slaves now served dessert—dried plums, salted almonds, and cakes soaked in honey. Lamps in wall niches broadcast the smell of olive oil and spread a guttering orange light over the tapestries and faded murals of battle scenes that covered the walls. The hall thrummed with subdued conversation.

Onesimus stood with Neos and the other non-serving slaves at the periphery of the room, eating from small plates they held in their hands. He eyed Philemon, who sat among the dignitaries, and bit down, crushing an almond and grinding it between his molars. He prayed a silent prayer to Artemis, one last appeal for freedom. So often he’d sacrificed to her at the crossroads temple and called upon her in the mountains. He’d been faithful, he thought. She’d answer his prayer, and at the next funeral he’d sit with the freedmen. He swallowed the almond and began to clip the inside flesh of his lower lip with his front teeth.

After dessert, one of Pater’s comrades rose to give the eulogy, wearing the gear of a Roman cavalryman, his iron helmet slightly askew. He was inebriated, but he still clutched his goblet. He staggered to the head of the room, spilling wine on slaves who braced him as he passed. He mounted the makeshift rostrum to face the crowd, his eyelids at half-mast, removed his helmet, set it on the platform, and noticed his goblet was empty. “Wine!” he called out. A house slave with a flagon scurried to fill his cup. After several gulps, he began to speak, slurring and slowed by the drink.

“Our greatest poet . . .” He broke off, already lost, then began again: “As Virgil says, ‘Of arms and a man I sing.’” Another long pause, and he began to wobble. “Pater was a soldier. A man of honor. Duty!” The last word was gruff, as if he were coughing. He entered a rambling story of how Pater’s wife, Atychia, had died in childbirth, and how Pater had joined the auxiliaries in his grief and spent twenty-five years in the Roman army, fighting in Illyricum and Germania, winning Roman citizenship for his family.

As Pater’s comrade prated, comparing his father’s fighting prowess to that of Aeneas, Onesimus shifted from one foot to the other, uncomfortable, tired of waiting. He scanned the layer of standing slaves that lined the walls, looking for his mother, now anxiously biting deeper into the skin of his lower lip and cheek. He hadn’t thought of it before, but if they were both to be freed, maybe they should stand together; it would make for easier toasting, easier congratulations from the rest of the slaves. His eyes completed the pass around the room, but he couldn’t see her. The speechmaker’s body-wobble grew to a slow gyration, like a spinning top starting to angle. He must have missed her. Maybe someone taller was standing in front of her? He looked again, more carefully this time, but still couldn’t spot her.

Just as he gave up looking, he caught sight of her at a table in the back of the room. Sitting. His heart drummed in his chest, butterflies in his stomach, and his teeth cut deeper into the soft flesh of his cheek. He scanned the tables but saw no other slaves sitting. Apphia was a rule-follower; she would only sit with permission. Had Philemon allowed it because she was an old woman? Because she needed rest after the procession? Because she’d raised Philemon as her own son? Because he loved her like his mother? Philemon had let her walk in the procession with Monica and the rest of the free people. And now she was sitting. The butterflies fled, replaced by a clamp around his gut, and his heart began to batter his ribs again. Onesimus drained his goblet.

The amplitude of the speechmaker’s gyration was now pronounced. His posture had become the topic of whispers throughout the dining hall, his axis tilting and rotating perilously. He opened his mouth to continue, but instead of speech, he produced a sonorous belch. Finally losing his balance, he dropped his goblet, tried to recover it, but slipped in the pool of wine on the rostrum. He pitched onto his rump, passed gas, and bounced off the edge of the platform, onto the floor. Another comrade, only slightly less drunk, hoisted the speechmaker to his feet and escorted him to a bench while two slaves scurried to wipe up the mess.

Philemon rose, quelling the crowd’s murmur. He made his way to the front, sober as a magistrate. The slaves leaned in, anxious for the reading of the will, but Onesimus saw his brother carried no papyrus. His spirit sank, and his mind caught up with his body: there’s no will; he’s only freeing Apphia.

Philemon mounted the tidied rostrum. “Now,” he said. His eyes widened, defiant, as if warning an invisible challenger. “Now,” he said again, the word grating at Onesimus, like a strigil with no oil, scraping against raw skin. “Thank you, Clopas, for that . . . illuminating eulogy. We forgive you its one flaw—that you quoted the wrong poet.” Then, with a hint of dark pleasure, he said, “My father was more Bacchus than Aeneas, if I may so boldly compare him to a god.”

Several house slaves suppressed a snicker, but Onesimus stared at his brother, unblinking, hoping against his premonition, now tasting blood from his cheek.

“Though I’ll begin by quoting a better poet,” said Philemon, “I regret I cannot quote a happier line. Ovid tells us, ‘No pleasure is ever unmingled; anxiety always intrudes upon joy.’ And so it is for us today. Our joy in feasting is mingled with the anxiety of loss.” Philemon’s tone was devoid of feeling. “And, no doubt, you’re expecting me to read my father’s will.” A murmur again rippled through the crowd. “Well, I’m sorry to say my father has increased our anxiety by failing to leave one—or at least one we could find.”

At this blunt admission, half the hall gasped. Onesimus could feel his extremities numbing as he retreated into himself, a despairing inner monologue competing with Philemon’s words. Of course it’s like this; how could it not be like this? Onesimus heard the next part of the speech as if Philemon were in a different room, connected to the dining hall by a long pipe that muffled the sound. He wondered if he was dreaming. His lower back began to ache, his head hurt, and his eyes became distant, vacant. He would remain a slave. His hateful brother’s slave. He looked at the floor, his face burning with shame at his misplaced confidence. He felt trapped, an animal in a cage.

“Now. Several members of our party tonight have sworn publicly they witnessed and sealed the will,” said Philemon. “But we haven’t found it. As a result, until and unless the will is found, the rules of intestacy govern, according to which all my father’s property and estate pass to his remaining family. Now,” he said again, the room in his grip. “As to the manumission of slaves . . . since we cannot know the deceased’s mind on the matter, it would not be right to free any of his slaves.”

A collective groan issued from the slave contingent. Not even Apphia, thought Onesimus, staring at his boots, wringing his hands, anger rekindled.

“Nevertheless, since my father is not survived by a wife, and since I am thereby the sole inheritor of the estate, it is within my discretion to distribute what is now my property according to how I imagine my father would have willed.”

Onesimus snapped back to attention, eyes on his brother, shoulders tense. The smell of anxiety drifted from his armpits to his nostrils.

“And, within the limits of reason and Roman law, it is our tradition that deserving slaves should be freed upon the death of their master. But who is deserving in this case? A question to which I have given much thought and prayer. Again, we cannot know my father’s mind with certainty. Nevertheless, I have no doubt of at least one dispensation he would have willed. And so I conclude with that alone, namely the freedom of his faithful slave, Apphia.” He picked out Apphia from the back of the room and smiled magnanimously at her. “Let us raise our cups to Apphia.”

Onesimus stood in silence, stunned, failing even to hear Philemon’s toast, let alone raise his goblet.

Next chapter

Risking crucifixion, Onesimus, an enslaved shepherd, flees his bitter half-brother and master, Philemon, only to find that freedom requires more than mere escape.

“. . . a masterful grasp of the cultural, political and spiritual context of the time . . . The heart of the novel beats for hope, and asks one essential question: what does it mean to truly be free?” —, author of Beyond the Point: A Novel

“. . . one of the best historical novels I’ve ever read on a New Testament figure . . . Mead’s novel utilizes cutting edge scholarship as he weaves a beautiful and inspiring story of hope and faith.” —Demetrius K. Williams, Professor of Comparative Literature and Religious Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukie; Editor of Onesimus Our Brother: Reading Religion, Race and Slavery in Philemon

“Through characters that are vividly complex, defying any easy, moralizing categorization, Mead delivers a thrilling piece of historical fiction that sheds needed light on a tiny letter whose controversial impact has been, and remains, gargantuan.” —, Associate Professor of New Testament Studies, Fuller Theological Seminary

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Story Recap

Onesimus and his fellow enslaved shepherds lead their flock down from summer pastures in the mountains to the villa of Onesimus’s deceased father, Pater, near Colossae, in the ancient Roman province of Asia. Onesimus expects to be freed by the terms of his father’s will, and he plans to resist serving as a freedman to his hateful half-brother, Philemon, heir of Pater’s estate. The shepherds encounter wolves on their way down the mountain, prompting Onesimus to remember last night’s dream about the goddess, Artemis.

The next day, at the seventh hour, just after midday, Onesimus and Neos set off for the funeral procession down the two-mile road from the villa to Colossae, parallel ruts carved in dirt by a thousand ox-drawn carts. A feast would follow. And the reading of the will. Onesimus walked in one rut, Neos in the other, a median of scruffy grass between them. They ambled downhill through a stand of pine trees, gnawing hard barley bread. As they emerged from the trees, the road flattened onto the floodplain, allowing a view of Colossae’s citadel, which perched on a hill overlooking the river to the north. They crossed through winter-barren vineyards, fruitless orchards, and empty olive groves. Against a backdrop of raucous birdsong, the only sounds were the shepherds’ chewing and their dusty footfalls. A bank of slate rain clouds stole up the valley, and behind them Mount Cadmus wore a layer of mist.

They crossed the intersection with the trunk road, which led east through the mountains, a six-day walk to the cities of Galatia, and west down the valleys to Ephesus. They entered the southern gate and started up the hill. Cramped three-story tenement blocks clung to the city walls like honeycomb. The smell of woodsmoke, fresh bread, and incense mixed with undertones of excrement and garbage to produce a pungent cocktail. A trio of Jewish men in tasseled simlah strode past, returning from afternoon prayer.

As they crested the hill and passed the marble temple at the crossroads, Onesimus’s heartbeat quickened. The doorstep of freedom, he thought. He uncorked his wineskin and took a long drink of bad wine, which puckered his face. He hoped for better at the feast. Ahead, a crowd dressed in black gathered in the street outside Pater’s domus, his house in town—now Philemon’s domus, Onesimus corrected himself. Trumpeters, cornu players, and a choir of ten men headed the procession, followed by twenty professional mourners, all women. Behind them, five masked actors, one dressed as a soldier, playing Pater, and the others in traditional clothing, standing in for ancestors—a welcoming committee from the underworld. After the actors came a cohort of some thirty slaves and freedmen, assembled from both the villa and the domus, many carrying flower garlands.

As Onesimus and Neos drew alongside the slave contingent, two house slaves looked at them askance: the shepherds were every bit country slaves, their shaggy hair and wild beards untended since arriving from the mountains, far exceeding the trim mourning beards worn by some of the male house slaves. Onesimus returned a hostile look. How dare they lord it over a son of the deceased, a son of the paterfamilias. Soon they’d hardly look him in the eye. He pushed in front of them, still glaring, and pulled Neos into formation.

Just then, the double front doors of the domus swung open, and two house slaves emerged with a bier bearing the dead man, clothed in military uniform. Two handles at each end of the bier rested on the slaves’ shoulders, elevating the body for display. As they carried it to the street, Apphia, Onesimus’s mother, and Monica, Philemon’s wife, emerged from the domus, arm in arm. Philemon followed close behind, his face grizzled and his bulky body wrapped in a black toga and cloak. If not for his middle-aged gut, Philemon could have passed for a gladiator: broad shoulders, bulbous calves, cruel hands. After Philemon came a train of family friends, military comrades, and members of the civic council on which Pater had sat, several tottering and lurching, already drunk.

Onesimus watched the dignitaries take up posts at the rear of the procession, behind the bier. His brother held his head high, his gaze fixed and distant. His eyes looked hard, with no trace of grief. Heartless, thought Onesimus, then felt a twinge in his stomach, guilt at his own lack of grief. Since he’d learned of it, Pater’s death had seemed only an opportunity, a path to freedom, but now he was struck with the bare truth: his father was dead. This fresh perspective also bore no sadness, deepening his guilt.

His mother caught his eye and beckoned him. For the somber occasion, her silvered-brown hair was around her shoulders, not wound in a workaday bun. Onesimus left Neos and made his way to the back of the procession. He passed the bier, and repellent hints of the eight-day corpse, barely masked with myrrh, drifted to his nostrils. Apphia left the procession to meet him. “Your beard is unkempt,” she said, advancing on him. “Why didn’t you trim it?”

“We just got back last night,” he said.

“Your father is dead.” The corners of her mouth creased in a frown, and her fierce eyes glittered like blue gemstones. “You should have trimmed it.”

“Enough, woman,” said Onesimus, stepping back and glancing around, embarrassed.

She wiped shaky hands on her tunic, and then reached out, embracing him and kissing both his cheeks. Did she smell of wine? He’d known her to drink only rarely apart from feasts and rituals. She’d always said Pater drank enough for them both. She forced a smile, and her wrinkles deepened. “I missed you,” she said, but then reverted to commands: “Walk with me.”

Onesimus nodded, on his guard, conscious of Philemon’s eyes on him. Apphia pulled him into line with her. She looked smaller than in the spring, before they’d left for the mountains. Thinner, weaker. The dark half-circles under her eyes spoke another plain fact he’d overlooked: his mother had lost not only her master but her lover. Might as well have been her husband; while she was his, he’d had no wife. “How are you?” said Onesimus, softening.

“I’m well,” she said, forcing another half-smile, avoiding his eyes.

Onesimus felt a hard double tap on his shoulder from behind. He turned to see his hulking brother, brow furrowed, looking down at him. Philemon’s full cheeks had begun to sag over his jawline, the beginning of jowls. Face of an aging woman, thought Onesimus. A stark contrast with the square jaw Onesimus had inherited from Pater.

“This is not your place,” said Philemon, his voice icy.

Onesimus looked at him with a blank face.

“With the slaves,” said Philemon, his cadence slow, his voice loud, as if teaching an idiot, gesturing toward the front of the procession with a hand like a club.

Onesimus’s stomach twisted, and his face flushed. Not even a moment with his bereaved mother. Why shouldn’t he walk at the rear with the dignitaries? He was the man’s son, about to be a freedman.

“He’s Pater’s family,” said Apphia, irritated. Then more gently, “He’s your brother.”

“Is he?” said Philemon. He looked at Onesimus, boring in with his eyes. “To the front.”

“What about her?” said Onesimus, nodding at Apphia, barely veiling his anger. His mother looked embarrassed. If he was still a slave, then so was she.

Philemon clenched his jaw but said nothing, again pointing to the front of the procession, cracking the knuckles on his other hand with his thumb.

Onesimus looked Philemon in the face. “Not for long,” he said.

Philemon narrowed his eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Onesimus stared back at him. “You’ll see.”

Philemon’s face went red, and he made fists. “Get with the slaves, or I’ll knock you there!”

Onesimus finally obliged, turning and strolling toward Neos and the other slaves, but he kept his head high. Despite his thumping heart and racing guts, he’d go in his own way. If Philemon were to be his master, it would be but a temporary arrangement, a mere formality until Onesimus was freed according to the terms of his father’s will. And he had reason to think he’d avoid such an arrangement entirely, being freed directly by the will. Either way, why give Philemon ready obedience?

The procession staggered into motion, heading for the necropolis north of the river. The trumpets, cornua, and choir began their music; the professional mourners shrieked and gyrated, tearing out clumps of hair and tossing them on the ground, gouging their forearms and cheeks with sharp fingernails, leaving bloody traces in the skin. As a member of the Fellowship of the Crossroads Temple, Onesimus had attended many funeral processions. They were all the same. The mourners would rip and tear at themselves, feigning deepest grief, then collect their wage, lick their wounds, and regrow their hair in time for the next procession. He took another swallow from his bitter wine as he began to walk, then absently picked a scab on his own forearm.

He remembered a night when he was ten. He’d slept on his mother’s wide couch, the one they’d shared when she stayed at the villa. During the third watch of the night, he woke to the sound of someone fumbling with the door handle. He nudged her awake, and they both sat up as the door swung open. Pater stumbled in, reeking of wine, his breath heavy and loud, eyes glazed. Onesimus stayed seated, trembling, but his mother stood and faced him. “I’m with the boy tonight,” she said. Her voice was gentle.

He ignored her words and came at her, pawing the neckline of her nightshirt, pulling it over her shoulder, eyes fixed on her covered breasts.

Apphia stepped back, avoiding his clumsy hands, and slipped the nightshirt back on her shoulder. “You shouldn’t be here,” she said, this time her voice firm.

Anger clarified Pater’s eyes. He lurched toward her, a bear awakened from slumber, grabbed her round the waist, and pressed her against his torso.

“You’re hurting me,” she said, wriggling free of his grasp, again fading backward.

Pater stripped off his cloak and tossed it in the corner and did the same with his tunic. He stood naked except for a loincloth and sandals, his thick bare chest reflecting blue in the moonlight that filtered through the open shutters. Again, he went for her, this time catching her wrist in a tight grip.

She cried out and slapped his face with her free hand.

He grabbed her other wrist and put his face a finger-length from hers. “You’re mine,” he said, barely controlling himself. “I’ll be where I want.”

“The boy,” she said through gritted teeth.

He let go of her wrists and turned back to the couch, seeming to have forgotten about Onesimus. Pater grunted and stepped toward him. Onesimus shrank back, pressing himself against the wall, but Pater snatched his forearm and dragged him off the couch toward the door. Onesimus pulled in the opposite direction to reach for his cloak—he wore only a thin under-tunic—but Pater twisted his arm and yanked him harder toward the door.

Onesimus shrieked in pain.

“You’re hurting him!” said his mother.

Pater unhooked the door latch more deftly than when he’d entered, swung open the door, tightened his grip on the boy’s arm, and flung him into the corridor.

Onesimus crashed headfirst into the opposite stone wall and split his brow; a flow of blood started from the gash. He sat on the floor, stunned, head humming like the plucked string of a lyre.

The door slammed, his ears rung, and behind the door his mother roared, “He’s your son, you monster!” He heard her grunting in what sounded like a struggle, and then again she thundered, “At least his clothes!”

Moments later, the door reopened, and Pater hurled Onesimus’s cloak and sandals into the corridor. “Slaves’ quarters,” he said, his voice a snarl, and slammed the door once more. Onesimus sat stunned in the hall another quarter-hour, head in his hands, dizzy with pain, until Pater’s muffled moans cued him to stumble to the slaves’ chamber.

As he followed the actors ahead of him in the procession, Onesimus dug his fingernail deeper into the now-bleeding wound on his forearm and scratched.

Next chapter

A few summers ago, I wrote this flash fiction piece while attending a workshop at The Glen. It was recently published in the Spring/Summer issue of the Maryland Literary Review, so I thought I’d share it. Let me know what you think in the comments.

Moth in a Closet

I once feared the shadow, as he does. In the spring, the boy watched me crawl across a sunflower petal, arching my back above my head and releasing the grip of my front feet, sending me forward, not an inch at a time. Perhaps he would have liked to get somewhere quicker, to leave, to fly. But at that time, I was not a moth but a worm, and the flower sustained me: how could I rush away?

The shadow. Perhaps the shadow could have driven me away. I’ll admit it terrified me. If the shadow descended, it might be too late, so the thing to do was prepare. Bits of petal, patches of color, hung on hooks on my back, so that when the shadow came I’d appear more plant than creature, a colorful coat making me more scenery than food.

Right before the shadow, there’d been a sound, a screech, a warning, and then mayhem: sunlight blocked by wings; the sound of feathers washing through air; a beak slashing, clutching, devouring. I stayed still, hiding my only hope. In the darkness of that shadow, to rush away was certain death.

But now, in summer, I don’t fear it. I travel by night when all is shadow. Transformed, I fly through darkness, my back to the moon, its pale light guiding my line, seeking sweet flower nectar, no need of a makeshift coat, for my emerald wings look like leaves nourished by white veins, a permanent disguise.

But the boy still fears the shadow. I was lured into his closet by the light, which he dare not turn off now lest his father see it change from light to dark and find him out. His father, who smells of cheap wine—a sweetness that almost drew me to the kitchen. His father, who shattered a lamp and tore the legs off a dining room chair. His father, who casts a shadow broad and dark. So I see the boy there, in the corner of the closet, covered by colorful clothing, mismatched, pulled from hangers in haste, trembling in place. To rush away would bring great suffering. Or worse.

They think I’m stupid, crashing over and over into the white bulb—even now, as I wait on the wall, my eyes readjusting, I may do it again. (If only they’d change the bulb from white to yellow.) But it’s not as if I fail to know what’s good for me, as if I forget some error in judgment each time I make it, deciding the same course of action mere seconds later, as if it were new, uncharted, rational. Stare at the sun for a minute, O human, and tell me, what then can you see? What is stupid is whipping a boy with an extension cord for spilling laundry soap.

Perhaps the shadow will pass. If the boy holds still, leaves on the light, stays huddled under the colorful clothing, appearing more apparel than person, perhaps his father will stop breaking furniture, lie on the floor, and sleep till next afternoon when the sweet smell of wine again drifts from the kitchen. And perhaps, after enough hiding and trembling, one day the boy will fly into the night, the moon at his back, seeking sweet things, disguised as a man, unafraid of the shadow.

Risking crucifixion, Onesimus, an enslaved shepherd, flees his bitter half-brother and master, Philemon, only to find that freedom requires more than mere escape.

“. . . a masterful grasp of the cultural, political and spiritual context of the time . . . The heart of the novel beats for hope, and asks one essential question: what does it mean to truly be free?” —, author of Beyond the Point: A Novel

“. . . one of the best historical novels I’ve ever read on a New Testament figure . . . Mead’s novel utilizes cutting edge scholarship as he weaves a beautiful and inspiring story of hope and faith.” —Demetrius K. Williams, Professor of Comparative Literature and Religious Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukie; Editor of Onesimus Our Brother: Reading Religion, Race and Slavery in Philemon

“Through characters that are vividly complex, defying any easy, moralizing categorization, Mead delivers a thrilling piece of historical fiction that sheds needed light on a tiny letter whose controversial impact has been, and remains, gargantuan.” —, Associate Professor of New Testament Studies, Fuller Theological Seminary

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Epigraph

“All of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

Galatians 3.27-28

54 CE, early December

The mountains south of Colossae,

in the Roman province of Asia

Pater was dead.

Ōnēsimus smiled. Tomorrow, he’d be free, he was sure of it. The next day, at the funeral, they’d read the will, and he’d no longer be a slave. Nor would his mother, Apphia, who had been Pater’s concubine. As he stood in the doorway of the crude summer shelter, little more than a heap of rocks topped with bedraggled thatch, Onesimus tried to imagine freedom: doing what he wanted, whenever he wanted, no one to tell him otherwise.

Last night’s dream still lingered, inchoate, its contents lurking just beyond his grasp. Something about his hateful half-brother? No, that wasn’t it. Not this time. His mind groped in the dark, but found only a feeling, the mere hint of a sightless vision. He thought again of his mother. More than once, she’d told him, “Dreams speak from the other world.” The unseen world of spirits, ghosts, and gods—of her one true God, she meant. Then she’d blather about some Egyptian—Joseph, if he wasn’t mistaken—at which point her words became noise, puffs of patronizing certainty. And what would she say of a dream hidden out of reach? Perhaps the other world should speak up, he thought, his mouth again curving into a wry smile.

He shivered in the frigid morning air. Gray light filtered through clouds with wispy downward tendrils like combed wool fibers, fresh from the fuller. A dusting of snow covered the ground—the first of the season—and swept up the scree slope across the valley to the south, toward the veiled peak of Mount Cadmus. Onesimus had prolonged their time in the mountains more than usual. He routinely delayed the return to the villa, to Colossae, breathing free air, avoiding the master’s eye. But they rarely stayed till snow. He pulled up his hood, brushed wavy hair from his ruddy face, picked up his staff, and slipped his free hand into the folds of his wool cloak.

He registered the dwindling wood pile and began across the sheepfold. The herd huddled on a bed of ferns, some shivering even in their eight-month coats, while the four dogs stayed tucked in snug circles, nestled around the flock, tracking Onesimus with a ripple of eyebrows. He hopped the willow fencing. In the preceding months, they’d picked over the forest close to the shelter, so he steered across the frosted meadow to a patch of trees still ripe with fuel.

He paused near the forest fringe. Six griffon vultures launched from high branches to the right, beat broad wings, and spiraled skyward, riding an updraft, silent, expansive. Barely breathing, he watched them rise, rapt, smoothing a brown lock behind his ear, then flipping it in front, then behind again. The birds drifted out of sight.

He closed his eyes. How would freedom feel? Like the siren smell of wine? Like roaring applause in a brimful theater? Like sprinting downhill, his cloak thrashing behind him? His stomach thrilled.

He opened his eyes, looked over his shoulder, and entered the forest, brushing between elastic branches of two juniper saplings. A broken stump stood before him, bleached gray with age, as tall as a man. Stubby shoulder-height branches on either side recalled a crouched boxer, and at face-level a scar in the decaying bark sneered at him. Still buoyant, Onesimus dropped his staff and began to box, ducking and jabbing the air in front of the snag.

At age six, he’d gone with Pater to the palaestra, the outdoor courtyard at the baths, where his father had begun teaching him to box. “Like a soldier,” Pater would say. They wore loincloths and leather gloves, and Pater oiled his fleshy barrel chest. He cuffed Onesimus with open hands, knocking him back and forth, smearing oil in his ears, which turned red with irritation and shame. He’d land a slap and mutter, “Anger, boy,” his breath stinking of posca, the sour wine of the Roman soldier. He insisted Onesimus come at him with fists, but it made no difference; Onesimus could never hit him. Until once, when he was fourteen, finally more angry than scared. Pater was plastered, his movements slow. Onesimus caught him on the jaw with a hook, rotating his slim frame into the punch like Pater had taught him, and then dropped his guard, astonished. He knew he’d hurt him, but Pater denied it and made an excuse to leave early. They never sparred again.

Onesimus stopped swinging, his breath quick, throat dry. He pulled a skin from under his cloak, uncorked it, took a generous swig, and grimaced. The dreaded lora—slave wine—the meager discharge of tired grapes twice-pressed already, their best juice cheering the hearts of freedmen and freeborns. The villa vintner had been tight in the spring when they left for the mountains. And through the summer, whenever they resupplied. Onesimus could often persuade the portly man to part with something better than lora, at least posca. In shearing season, a bag of raw wool delivered after midnight at the back door usually did the business. Onesimus had to avoid his mother’s judgmental gaze, but Pater was mostly too drunk to miss the wool or the wine—his father would count the lost drink toward his own endless thirst. The vintner’s pudgy wife fulled and spun the wool herself, quietly, in an empty storeroom, after bedtime, smelling of sour breastmilk, making yarn to weave better garments for her grubby brood or to sell at market for extra coins. Sometimes Onesimus got imported wine. Once even a skin of Falernian, nectar of the finest white grapes, aged ten years. But it seemed his luck had run out: the vintner’s eldest could now wear his father’s castoffs, and the younger ones traded up to the cloaks and tunics their father’s wine had won over the years, each garment a bitter reminder of good wine gone by. Onesimus took another draw of the lora and replaced the cork.

He returned to the fold with an armload of wood, splinters digging through his sleeves, scratching at his wrists, his staff balanced on top. The sheep remained huddled, but the dogs were up and alert, pacing the fence line. Their noses twitched with secret knowledge. Onesimus scanned the meadow, brown eyes narrowed, unsettled by the dogs’ behavior. Seeing nothing, he dumped the wood on the pile, retrieved his staff, and took a seat on one of the four rocks they’d placed around the fire ring.

Neos slouched on his rock. He’d tended the fire through the last watch. The boy’s cloak wrapped tight around his skinny frame, and fine features poked out from under his hood. At eighteen, he was only two years younger than Onesimus, but he seemed to him still a child. Timid. Unsure of himself. But undeniably handsome. Neos whittled a piece of pine into a cross; curved shavings sprang into the fire with each knife stroke. Handsome and foolish, thought Onesimus, eyeing the cross.

Neos looked up and cut himself, inhaling through his teeth.

Onesimus sighed, still feeling judgmental. “All right?”

“Not deep,” Neos mumbled, cut finger in his mouth. He shook out his hand and passed Onesimus a bowl of warm wine, again lora, spilling some in the process. “Sorry,” he said, barely audible.

“How was last watch?”

“Well . . . lots of howling.”

Neos had mumbled his reply, but Onesimus understood. “Close?” asked Onesimus. He wrinkled his nose.

“Not sure. Closer than two nights ago.”

“In the meadow?”

“Hard to . . . ” Neos failed to finish his sentence. “Maybe?”

“The dogs are bothered,” said Onesimus. Signs of wolves had become frequent in the last month. It was the same every year: as temperatures dropped, wild prey became scarce, which made the flock more tempting. “Have to be careful on the way down,” said Onesimus.

The twins, Chaleb and Gedeon, emerged from the shelter, their short, rawboned frames wrapped in ratty cloaks. The smell of pubescent armpits attacked Onesimus as the boys took seats either side of him. “Ever wash?” he said.

Chaleb snorted while Gedeon passed out tough barley bread and dried fish. Neos ladled more steaming wine from the tripod into bowls and passed them to the twins, this time without spilling.

Chaleb glanced at Onesimus. “Think you’ll be freed?”

A bold question, thought Onesimus. “Pater said so.” His mouth formed a self-satisfied grin. “You’ll be in charge.”

“You’ll go?” said Chaleb, eyebrows raised.

Onesimus nodded.

“What’ll you do?”

“Pater said he’d leave me a third of the flock.”

“A third!” said Neos, with rare clarity.

Onesimus nodded again, faking nonchalance. Pater owed him, he thought. After all, he was the man’s son, albeit by his concubine. “Move down valley, closer to Laodicea. Lease some pasture to start. Maybe buy later. Maybe even a slave or two.”

“You’ve thought about this,” said Chaleb. “What about Phīlēmon?”

“What about him?”

“You’ll owe him service,” said Chaleb. “Your patron.”

“Depends how Pater did it,” said Onesimus. “If he freed me directly, I’ll owe him nothing.”

“But if he didn’t—if he left Philemon to do it?” said Chaleb. “What about your reputation? Your duty. He’s your brother.”

Onesimus spat. “Brother,” he said, jaw tight. Philemon was heir of the estate, Pater’s first son, freeborn by a different woman. For as long as Onesimus could remember, Philemon had hated him. He was an adult when Onesimus was young, so the hatred was not that of siblings raised together, shown in harsh words and physical attacks, payback for the untold offenses of childhood; rather, it was mysterious, inscrutable, a fixed part of his world since before he could understand offense and its reasons, an opaque enmity of cold looks, short words, sharp tones, and studied neglect. Philemon did strike him sometimes, however, when Apphia wasn’t looking, always for some triviality. Spilled food. Wool shorn too close to the skin. Missing wine.

Given their enmity, Onesimus felt no filial duty toward his brother, and he cared more for his freedom than his reputation. But Chaleb might be right: if Pater had willed Philemon to free him, Onesimus would, strictly speaking, have continuing legal duties to serve his brother without pay—running errands, helping with shearing and lambing, supporting his reputation in Colossae—and to show an eager attitude in doing so. They would trade the master-slave relation for one of patron and client—a freer relation for Onesimus to be sure, but still one that bound him legally to his brother, their history of enslavement lurking like a shadow. But what if Onesimus avoided the prescribed work? Would Philemon take legal action? It seemed doubtful. Onesimus might work a day here and there, but he wouldn’t give Philemon his best, and he certainly wouldn’t be eager. Eagerness seemed a ridiculous requirement but, happily, almost impossible to disprove. If Pater had freed him while still alive, Onesimus would’ve served him more willingly; at least in his case there’d been moments of fatherly care between rounds of drunken abuse. With his brother, there’d been nothing. Onesimus guessed Philemon would reject even being called his brother, let alone offer the substance of it. If he served Philemon at all, his service would be paltry and begrudging.

Onesimus poured some wine on the ground from his bowl, a libation for Artemis, goddess of the hunt, and whispered a prayer of gratitude.

Chaleb and Gedeon exchanged a look, bowed, and closed their eyes, foreheads furrowed. Neos noticed the twins and did the same. Chaleb said, “Blessed are you, Lord our God, King of the universe, who brings forth bread from the earth.”

Onesimus took a bite of fish before their blessing was complete, and when they opened their eyes, he chewed loudly with his mouth open.

Chaleb looked at Neos. “When was the last time you saw Felicitas?”

Neos munched, his expression thoughtful. With each chew, the light curls of a teenage beard shifted up and down on his face. “Well,” he said, considering, “maybe . . . four months?”

“Won’t even remember you,” said Onesimus. He smirked.

“We talked about marriage last time.” Neos had taken the comment too seriously.

“Well,” said Onesimus, loosened by the wine, imitating Neos’s halting speech, “that was stupid.” He wished he could put the words back in his mouth.

Neos flinched, as if he’d been cut again, and looked at the ground, sullen.

“Sorry,” said Onesimus, gently grabbing his friend’s elbow.

Neos nodded, still looking at the ground.

In the awkward silence, Onesimus pushed the last bite of bread into his mouth and stood up. He walked across the sheepfold again, stopping at the fence line, searching the meadow. A marriage of slaves is stupid, he thought. He shimmied his right arm to loosen his leather jerkin, which felt too tight around his neck. If one of them gets sold? Or their children? He swigged from his wineskin.

He felt the familiar pressure of a lamb nuzzling his leg. It was Tritos, birthed in the spring by Loulou, his favorite ewe. Sheep over people any day, he thought, as he squatted down and looked the lamb in the face, scratching both sides of its neck. Loulou and Tritos would be in his third of the flock, he thought, satisfied.

Just then, a harmony of lupine howls drifted over the meadow, sending goosebumps across his body. Loulou bleated, Tritos darted back to the flock, and the dogs stood at the fence line, growling, hackles raised. Onesimus marched back to the fire pit. “We need to go.”

They doused the fire, collapsed the fencing, loaded the mules, and set off down the mountain, their breath ghostly in the chill air. Neos traveled in front of the flock, tracking the familiar route through the sparse alpine forest. The twins took the right and left flanks, each leading a loaded mule, while Onesimus brought up the rear, scanning the woods with a nervous eye. The four dogs patrolled the perimeter of the flock, fussing and nipping at stragglers. Their woolen charges ambled across the rough terrain, collar bells sounding flatly, bleating complaints like geriatrics made to walk on morning-stiff limbs.

After a few hours and no sign of wolves, they’d dropped two stadia into thicker forest. The tighter, taller canopy had kept the snow from the forest floor but also preserved a layer of frost against the warming sun. Each step made a composite crunch of needles, woody debris, and icy crystals beneath Onesimus’s leather boots. Pine filled his nose. He loved this section of woods, so open and majestic, as if he were passing between the columns of a great temple. Though he’d never seen the house of Artemis in Ephesus, he imagined it this way.

After midday, they reached a meadow with a pond, the halfway point of the journey and the place they usually took lunch. They’d dropped below the snow, so the grasses were verdant. Across the glade, the slope fell away, affording a sweeping view of the Lycus Valley: Colossae, Laodicea, even the white cliffs of Hierapolis in the distance. Chaleb and Gedeon made for the pond to fill empty skins. The dogs followed, their tongues splashing and scooping the water, then returned to their job, pacing the fringe of the glade. The sheep drank, grazed, and lounged.

The shepherds gathered near an outcrop at the pond and unpacked lunch. But before they could eat, Phylax, Onesimus’s dog and the largest of the four, began barking urgently near the upslope edge of the clearing. The other three dogs bolted toward the commotion in a blur of black and cream fur.

Onesimus jumped to his feet, hitched his belt, and grabbed his staff. “Gather the flock,” he said, and then dashed toward the dogs. As he drew near, he could see they were facing down a pack of six wolves. Why weren’t they fighting? He’d seen their dogs kill wolves before, even outnumbered. But arriving at the stand-off, he understood: the alpha wolf was enormous, almost looking Onesimus in the eye.

Images from his dream the night before flooded back: sprinting in the forest, towering trees flashing through his periphery, black pine and cedar so tall and broad he wonders if he’s in the colonnade of a massive temple, pillars wrapped in fluted marble bark. He’s pursuing five wolves ahead, but they’re quicker, the distance between him and the pack stretching like a morning yawn. His face, his arms, his guts strain with urgency. The farther ahead the pack extends, the more useless the thick staff in his hand becomes.

Just as he wonders why they run, why they fear him, there’s a high-pitched whistle in his left ear, almost a whine, and immediately a tortured yelp as one of the wolves falls ahead of him. Seconds later, he strides past the writhing animal, blood gushing from the entry and exit wounds of the black arrow lodged in its neck. Another whistle, this time in his right ear. Another fallen wolf. And now rhythmic sounds behind him, like water that ceases pouring and begins to patter from a roof to the ground below. The rhythm accelerates and a woman flashes past, a head taller than him, the muscular legs beneath her short tunic powering her forward, her feet barely touching the ground, and he knows it’s the virgin huntress. Two dogs whip past him on either side, keeping pace with the goddess, bolting forward in silent devotion. In full stride, the woman whips a black arrow from the quiver strapped to her back and, with a single motion, launches it into a third wolf. Then a fourth and fifth, and the spell breaks.

Onesimus gauged the weight of the alpha wolf standing before him at two hundred fifty librae, much heavier than Phylax. Heavier even than himself. Her eyes were different colors—one amber, one pale blue—and the white fur under her snout was stained brown with the blood of a recent kill. The other five wolves, all more ordinary in size, flanked the alpha and matched the aggressive barking of the dogs. The alpha stood still, silent, looking down on the dogs, disdainful, as if their frenzied aggression were juvenile posturing.

Still breathing hard from his sprint, adrenaline coursing, heart in his throat, Onesimus stepped in front of the dogs and swung the butt-end of his staff near the alpha’s head, trying to scare her off. Her pack shrank back, but she didn’t flinch. She contracted her muzzle, exposing finger-length fangs and brilliant pink gums, snarling, defiant.

Onesimus shuddered and felt nauseous. He swung the staff again, this time closer to the alpha’s face, and yelled with all the ferocity he could muster. Again, she didn’t flinch. She stared hard at him, eyes almost human, then turned and walked toward the woods at the edge of the clearing, her cowed companions hustling ahead in the same direction. As the wolves retreated, the dogs advanced, still a riot of barking, though leaving a buffer for the alpha. At the edge of the clearing, she turned and let go another guttural snarl—this one aimed at the dogs, who leapt back with a yelp. She locked eyes with Onesimus one last time and strolled into the woods.

He reached a trembling hand under the neckline of his jerkin and pulled out a charm, hung from a leather necklace. The silver charm depicted Artemis, her deadly bow and quiver slung over her shoulder, a hunting dog on either side. He whispered a prayer of thanks, kissed the charm, and tucked it back against his chest.

Next chapter

Ten years ago, I was sitting in the library of Fuller Theological Seminary reading a commentary on the New Testament letter, Philemon (as one does), when I got the idea to write a novel telling a backstory to the letter.

This moment marked the beginning of my fiction-writing journey: I didn’t decide to become a writer and then go looking for stories; rather, a story found me, and I had to write it.

I tunneled into scholarship on the letter, and on the culture, geography, and history of ancient Turkey. But more than research, I had to wrangle fiction—a nine-headed hydra wholly different from the essays of my 14-year saga as a grad student in theology and philosophy. I took fiction-writing courses, I attended workshops, I read craft books, and I hired editors to critique my work. I built my boat while sailing it.

Now, ten years on, the novel is complete, and I plan to roll it out serially—chapter by chapter, week by week—on my Substack publication, . I’ve scheduled the first chapter for Sunday, June 21st, 2026. Below is a preview of the cover art (thank you, Shirleen Chang!), a short blurb, and two endorsements from early readers.

Risking crucifixion, Onesimus, an enslaved shepherd, flees his bitter half-brother and master, Philemon, only to find that freedom requires more than mere escape.

“. . . a masterful grasp of the cultural, political and spiritual context of the time . . . The heart of the novel beats for hope, and asks one essential question: what does it mean to truly be free?” —, author of the novels Burst Into Song (forthcoming) and Beyond the Point

“. . . one of the best historical novels I’ve ever read on a New Testament figure . . . Mead’s novel utilizes cutting edge scholarship as he weaves a beautiful and inspiring story of hope and faith.” —Demetrius K. Williams, Professor of Comparative Literature and Religious Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukie; Editor of Onesimus Our Brother: Reading Religion, Race and Slavery in Philemon

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Serial Fiction: The Push

So why publish the novel serially? I’ve felt both a push and a pull to do so.

First, the push: agents and traditional publishers haven’t caught my vision. But I don’t think that’s because the novel falls short. The two professional editors I worked with over the years both said it’s one of the best indie novels they’ve read, and they could easily see it in a bookstore. So why no joy with traditional publishers?

First, the book straddles genres: publishers might view it as either “Christian fiction” or literary-historical fiction, depending on which they publish. In fact, my guess is they’ve concluded it belongs to whichever genre they don’t publish (sigh). For example, given the overt (though I hope still tasteful) biblical and theological themes of the book, I imagine literary-historical folks view my project as “too Christian” for them.

But the book also isn’t “Christian fiction.” In my (wholly unscientific) assessment, that genre generally amounts to romance by another name—which does not smell as sweet. These “clean” romances tend to extol terrible values, chief among them the subservience and sexual repression of women. ’s post, below, represents my worries.

Church Blogmatics by Beth Felker Jones

What if Christian romance novels are worse for your soul than the secular ones?

Fellow Pilgrims…

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10 months ago · 46 likes · 1 comment

Worse, traditional Christian publishers don’t do much fiction in the first place—the Christian book market has always been dominated by non-fiction. (Reason: Christians care about truth, and fiction is false, right? I’ve rolled my eyes so hard they may be stuck.)

This non-fiction bias means Christian publishers push fiction writers into a non-fiction marketing mold, requiring a large, ready-made audience (a “platform”) before publishing. And I don’t fit that mold.

There are some literary novels that directly engage biblical themes and settings without falling into the “Christian fiction” genre. Frederick Buechner’s The Son of Laughter and Sue Monk Kidd’s The Book of Longings come to mind. But such books are rarely debut novels. Before The Son of Laughter, Buechner published A Long Day's Dying. Before The Book of Longings, Monk Kidd published The Secret Life of Bees.

The upshot is that both secular and Christian publishers tend to view my kind of project—a debut, biblical, theological, literary, historical novel—as radioactive. My conclusion: if the story is ever to escape my hard drive, I’ll have to go non-traditional. That’s the push.

Serial Fiction: The Pull

The pull is that serial fiction in digital format is attractive right now. It’s at once both new and old, reclaiming a vintage format in a shiny new-tech wrapper.

As observes in his article, “Everything I Know about Self-Publishing,” reading, in our culture, has lurched away from pages and toward pixels. Perhaps as a consequence, our cultural attention span has shrunk, and we tend to read shorter. Kelly writes,

“In general, people devote less time to books because of the huge amount of attention they require. It is easier to string that attention out in an ongoing series of posts.”

Perhaps for this reason, serial fiction is having a moment on Substack. Writers like , , , and are all publishing fiction this way.

At the same time, serial fiction reaches back to the roots of the novel. As notes in her article, “How to Read a Serialized Novel on Substack,” many writers in the literary canon first published their novels serially in journals and magazines, including Charles Dickens, George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Reading serially allows for story marination between chapters, deeper thinking about the subject matter, and greater anticipation. In this way, it’s a kind of resistance to our culture of haste and maybe even a tool to slow or reverse the shriveling of our phone-addled attention spans. That’s the pull.

Nuts and Bolts

So how will it work? Beginning on June 21st, 2026, I’ll post a chapter to every Sunday. If you’re already on my email list, the chapters will just show up in your inbox, like this one did.

Since the book is 6,000 pages long, . . . kidding! It’s actually around 400 pages—standard for a historical novel. I’ll post it in 55 chapters, averaging six to eight pages each (1,500-2,000 words). Your attention span can totally do this.

For now, all posts will be free. With that said, if you enjoy the story, I would ask two things of you, faithful reader:

1. Consider becoming a paid subscriber to support my work and help raise money for a physical book launch (some of us still read long and on paper!). It’s only $5/month.

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2. Consider telling someone about the novel if you think they’d like it, too.

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For the Binge-ers Anonymous crowd, at certain breakpoints in the story I’ll collect the already-posted chapters into e-novellas available for purchase, so you can get your fix (no judgement!). The e-novellas will be free to paid subscribers.

For those who listen to their fiction, I’m recording audio of each chapter, to be accessible at the top of each post and through a podcast on the normal channels (Spotify, Apple, etc.).

I’ll also post occasional essays that give background on the novel and my ten-year journey of writing it. With weekly chapters and these essays, subscribers will get a few more emails from me than normal (!). If your inbox overfloweth, you can opt out of particular email types here. (I’ll include that link in each post too.)

Navigating a serial novel on Substack is a little trickier than reading a book, so I’ve made a “Table of Contents” to orient and reorient you if you get lost. There’ll be a link to that page in every chapter, so you can always find your way back.

Finally, thanks for joining me on this writing journey. Solo-screaming into the void has its place, but I prefer doing it with friends. :) Seriously, your support means a lot to me, and I hope this next leg of the journey—into serial fiction—is engaging and encouraging for you. As always, I’d love to hear from you. Leave a comment or drop me a message any time. I promise to get right back to you.

Neither Slave nor Free is a serial novel issued in weekly chapters. It tells a literary-fictional, historically-plausible backstory to the New Testament letter, Philemon. New chapter every Sunday. Here’s the one-sentence story description and a few blurbs from early readers:

Risking crucifixion, Onesimus, an enslaved shepherd, flees his bitter half-brother and master, Philemon, only to find that freedom requires more than mere escape.

“. . . a masterful grasp of the cultural, political and spiritual context of the time . . . The heart of the novel beats for hope, and asks one essential question: what does it mean to truly be free?” —, author of Beyond the Point: A Novel and Burst into Song (forthcoming)

“. . . one of the best historical novels I’ve ever read on a New Testament figure . . . Mead’s novel utilizes cutting edge scholarship as he weaves a beautiful and inspiring story of hope and faith.” —Demetrius K. Williams, Professor of Comparative Literature and Religious Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukie; Editor of Onesimus Our Brother: Reading Religion, Race and Slavery in Philemon

“Through characters that are vividly complex, defying any easy, moralizing categorization, Mead delivers a thrilling piece of historical fiction that sheds needed light on a tiny letter whose controversial impact has been, and remains, gargantuan.” —, Associate Professor of New Testament Studies, Fuller Theological Seminary

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Table of Contents

Part I

1. Down the Mountain. Onesimus expects freedom.

2. Funeral Procession. Onesimus joins Pater’s funeral procession.

3. The Will. Onesimus attends Pater’s funeral feast.

4. Morning Shave. Apphia and Philemon discuss Onesimus.

5. New Concubine. Felicitas goes shopping.

6. Crossroads Temple. Onesimus worships Artemis before the feast.

7. Ninth-Day Feast. Philemon makes his faith public.

8. Mysterious Meeting. Onesimus gathers with the other slaves at the river.

9. Forced Baptism. Onesimus tries to avoid it.

10. Journey to Hierapolis. Philemon and Onesimus travel to market.

11. Journey Home. Strangers on the road.

12. Fugitivus. Onesimus encounters a crucifix. (September 6th, 2026)

Part II

Coming soon.

Part III

Coming less soon.

Part IV

Coming later.

Part V

Coming much later.

Part VI

Okay, I feel like you’re rushing me.

Bonus Material: On Writing the Novel

1. Announcing my novel, Neither Slave nor Free, issued serially on Substack

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Publishing News

• The Orange Rose Literary Magazine recently published the essay I wrote several years ago on the loss of our family dog, Hazel. Link and her sweet mug below, in case you missed it.

• In 2016, I began work on a literary novel titled Neither Slave nor Free—a fictional backstory to the Apostle Paul’s New Testament letter, Philemon. The manuscript has been complete but unpublished for several years. As I approach the ten-year anniversary of starting the novel, I’ve decided to publish it serially—chapter-by-chapter—on my Substack publication, . More soon.

Writing News

• I’m making progress on the continuation of the story in my novella, Body in a Barrel. I’m envisioning it as a novel—an homage to Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Here’s a couple of paragraphs from the work-in-progress:

The next morning, Grace went straight to the marina to wash down the boat. She’d thrown the biggest pieces of barrel overboard in the middle of the lake, but they’d been so corroded they’d shed rusty fragments onto the boat deck. As she flushed the dark pieces along the gunwales with a hose, watching them flow to the back of the boat and out the transom scuppers, she thought of Lenny. She pictured him sitting on a shabby couch in his shabby mobile home, drinking cheap whiskey, watching TV, getting up once an hour to part the curtains a few inches and check for cops.

She smiled again at her mother’s suggestion they were having an affair. Absurd. But why was Grace helping him? He was hardly lovable—he was a murderer for crying out loud, albeit a reluctant one. Yet he’d somehow gotten under her skin. The man clearly needed help, needed a friend. And frankly, so did she. Her mother’s words cut her again: she wasn’t wrong that Grace didn’t have any friends. She hadn’t seen her high school friends in years, and she had no desire to. What would she have in common with them now? She’d heard Susan had a job in marketing at one of the casinos. Alex had shocked them all by getting into Yale, swapping her Emo-chain-smoker vibe for Ivy League preppy almost overnight. By now, she was probably an investment banker for God’s sake, or a management consultant. And Grace was a community college dropout with a dead brother, working for next-to-nothing at her parents’ business, living in their house, thieving boat parts, trying to escape.

Mini-Interview with Karen Swallow Prior

is the author of five books, including her latest, You Have a Calling: Finding Your Vocation in the True, Good, and Beautiful, which recently won the Christian Book Award in the Christian Living category. She has a monthly column for Religion News Service. Her writing has appeared in Christianity Today, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, First Things, Vox, Think Christian, The Gospel Coalition, and various other places.

What inspired your most recent writing project?

You Have a Calling, my most recent book, grew out of a conference talk I gave a few years ago in which I argued that we are all—as God’s image-bearers—called to be creative (even those who don’t think of themselves as creative) and that creativity is much broader than we tend to think of it. The idea grew from there into how our callings are so much more than our paid work but really about pursuit of the true, good, and beautiful. Having had many conversations about calling and vocation with college students over the years, and having gone through my own vocational crisis recently, the rest of the book kind of fell into place. In some ways, it was the easiest of all my books to write because it was about ideas, concepts, and conversations I’ve had for a lifetime. It’s philosophical in many ways, but also very personal.

What’s a piece of writing advice that guides your work?

The writing advice I have to give myself all the time is “trust the process.” By that I mean trust the writing process. I almost always feel like I cannot pull off what I’m sitting down to write and that I was a fool for thinking I could. But I’ve done it enough to know that that is just a feeling, and the process itself will work, and I will write what I set out to write if I just keep going.

What’s one of your favorite books and why?

I have a few all-time favorite books and my answer to which one is my favorite changes from day to day and mood to mood. Today I’m going to pick Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. I love it so much because it is an entertaining and delightful story. Yet, it also reveals so many truths about human character, human desires, and relationships. And it’s also quite hilarious, despite having a sobering ending.

Reading Recommendations

• You Have a Calling by . This book was encouraging for me as a writer with a day job. Her distinctions between our paid work, our passions, and our callings were especially helpful. Try the audiobook!

• Mother Mary Comes to Me by . I just finished this powerful memoir focused on Roy’s tumultuous relationship with her mother, Mary Roy (“She was my shelter and my storm”). Roy also wrote one of my all-time favorite novels, the Booker-Prize-winning The God of Small Things, which is set in Kerala, India—“God’s own country,” “an emerald strip between the mountains and the sea”—a place that is especially dear to me.

• ’s Substack publication, . Reflective. Literary. Smart. Sometimes raw. Always wise.

• Make Your Home in This Luminous Dark: Mysticism, Art, and the Path of Unknowing by , a philosophy professor at Calvin University. I’ve just started this one, but so far it’s fantastic: a recounting of Smith’s journey into mysticism, and an invitation to follow him. Sharp writing, profound subject matter. It’s helping me put words to aspects of my spiritual journey I’ve sensed for some time. Also, as someone with a Ph.D. in philosophy and former aspirations to become a professor, I’m floored by how much my story has in common with his.

Compelling Quote

“‘Follow your passion.’ This little proverb is repeated so often—whether expressed verbatim, or more metaphorically, or imaginatively through art—that it’s easy to mistake its counsel for a universal, timeless, self-evident truth. It’s not. As life advice, this idea is a fairly novel concept, reaching axiomatic status only late in the twentieth century. If you plug the phrase, ‘follow your passion,’ or ‘pursue your passion,’ into Google’s Ngram Viewer (a database of print sources dated between the years 1500 and 2019), you will find that both of these phrases were nearly non-existent until the 1990s—at which point they suddenly appear on the graph and shoot straight up like a tower. The advice is not self-evident either. In fact, Cal Newport, the Georgetown computer science professor known for his research on productive work, calls it, ‘dangerous advice.’”

— Karen Swallow Prior, You Have a Calling

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Prayer

A prayer from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, adapted by Phyllis Tickle in her The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime:

I thank you, heavenly Father, that you have delivered me from the dominion of sin and death and brought me into the kingdom of your Son; and I pray that, as by his death he has recalled me to life, so by his love he may raise me to eternal joys; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

A few years back, I wrote this piece about our sweet family dog, Hazel, just after she died. It was recently published in The Orange Rose Literary Magazine, so I thought I’d also share it here.

I woke up around 8:30 on a Monday, feeling a bit sick, and went to the kitchen for a glass of water. As I looked out the window over our sink and into the backyard, I noticed my twelve-year-old chocolate lab, Hazel, lying on the ground in the wood chips near the shed. On first glance, nothing seemed amiss. Hazel often lay around outside, sunbathing and collecting dirt she’d later bring inside. But on my second look, I noticed her head was twisted in a direction that failed to comport with her splayed legs. I thought to myself, only dead things lie like that. My mind filled with fog, and I began repeating, “Oh no, oh no.” I went outside to look more closely. I touched her, and she didn’t move. Her tongue was sticking out and her mouth was full of wood chips, as if she’d fallen over and bitten the ground in pain. Ants had begun to crawl on her face.

***

Hazel was my first dog, and I confess she often got on my nerves: barking at our guests; barking at strangers on the street; barking when other dogs barked; barking for no apparent reason; (did I mention the barking?); leaving stinky surprises in the back yard; getting in my way when I worked around the house. On one of our early walks together, Hazel had done her business next to a tree, and I’d stopped to put it in a plastic bag. As I reached for the pile with my right hand and held the leash loose in my left, two squirrels chased each other down the trunk of the tree, across the street, and up a tree on the other side. Hazel bolted after them, jerking the leash awkwardly from my hand and fracturing my ring finger in a nasty spiral pattern. For the next few months, I had two pins stuck through my finger, and I used dictation software at work. (My wife lovingly called it my “Franken-finger,” after the bolts sticking out of Frankenstein’s neck.)

But Hazel was also incredibly sweet. Her love language was play. Most days, when I returned from work, she’d tempt me into a game of rope-tug or chase. She loved vegetables, especially raw carrots and zucchini, and she respected assiduously the boundary between the human food we sometimes offered her and off-limits human food—even if the latter was there for the taking. She loved to kiss my wife and daughters’ faces (not really my thing…), and mostly, she just wanted to be around us, to make sure her pack was okay.

In the months prior to her death, Hazel had been ailing. Skin at the edges of her fur—around her paws, mouth, and eyes—had developed sores. Her hind legs had stiffened, and she went completely blind. She changed from a dog who craved walks to one who couldn’t manage more than a block or two. The vet couldn’t identify the cause of Hazel’s ailments without expensive tests, which likely would have led to even more expensive treatment. For better or for worse, we aren’t the kind of people who spend big money on a pet, so we ended up treating her symptoms with steroids. We understood there was something really wrong with Hazel and that she was not long for this world. The treatment mostly worked—the steroids cleared up the sores—but it made her extra-thirsty, which led to extra drinking, which led to less bladder control, which led to peeing in the house, often on herself. We developed a routine for cleaning her up and carried on.

The weekend before she died, my other family members went out of town, leaving me to care for Hazel alone. At first, I dreaded the idea. I typically spend Saturday working around the house and Sundays lying low. I imagined taking care of Hazel would be something like caring for a young child: you can’t get anything else done, but you also don’t get any rest. However, I found I actually enjoyed it. I managed (uncharacteristically) to let go of my non-Hazel expectations and purposed simply to be present to my sweet old girl. When Hazel had an accident, she’d make her way to wherever I was and stand in front of me until I saw she needed help. She’d patiently endure the humiliating clean-up—mini-sponge-baths for a dog who hated water—and then resume lying around or clumsily navigating the back yard by Braille. Her dependence on me reminded me of my own profound dependence on others—a fact I should keep in mind but usually overlook. My compassion for our loyal, frail, stoic Hazel deepened. She was never much for physical affection—if you reached to pet her on the head, she’d typically shrink back a few inches. But several times that weekend, I’d stroke her belly while she rested on the rug and speak tenderly to her, and I noticed her exhales become more pronounced and timed with my touch, as if consciously absorbing my love.

***

After examining Hazel where she lay, twisted in our yard, I went back inside, unable to think what to do. Despite my reluctance to touch something dead, I decided I should move her to the shade and wrap her in a sheet; it seemed undignified to leave her exposed, where she’d fallen. I laid out the shroud, picked her up, and carried her to the side yard. As I set down her fifty-five-pound body, my lower back clenched in a spasm. Though I didn’t welcome the pain, it somehow seemed appropriate: a physical reminder of my loss. Irrationally, I both hoped my injury would heal quickly and that it would linger on a while.

Later that day, a young man with a stronger back came to pick up Hazel’s body for cremation at the Humane Society. I led him to the side yard. He gripped the shroud and hoisted her up. I followed as he carried her and slid her body into one of the locking compartments in the back of his truck. He closed the inner door, a steel grid with four-inch squares, and as it clicked shut, I was overcome by the fact that I would never see Hazel again. The young man with the strong back started doing paperwork. “Is it okay if I touch her?” I said. He nodded, and I slipped my hand through one of the openings in the grid, parted the shroud, and stroked the soft fur on her belly one last time. Tears welled. After a few seconds, I turned back to the young man. “I’ve got an old dog too,” he said. “I’m not ready for this.” I nodded. As he tore off my copy of the paperwork, my face crumpled in sadness. I joined my daughter on the front porch; we stood together and cried.

In the mornings, when I’m doing my exercises or getting on my bike to ride to work, Hazel is not there curled up on the couch, or poking her head through the doggy door, just to see me off. At midday, when I’m making my lunch, she’s not there begging politely for a baby carrot or a piece of cucumber. At the end of my work day, she’s not there to greet me with wagging tail and a rope in her mouth. At bedtime, she’s not there to breathe into my soft words and tender touch. When the dogs next door bark, she isn’t there to reply. And I can’t remember why she ever got on my nerves.

This morning, I received a message through my author website from what seems like a scammer. I get many of these, most of which invite me to submit my book to a “book club” or “reading group” who are “enthusiastic” to read it.

They generally don’t ask for money up front, but I’m sure email #2 would introduce the pay-to-play clause. Which is incredibly silly: if your book club wants to read my book, why don’t they just get it and read it? Answer: because there is no book club.

Many of these messages praise my book in suspiciously subtle detail, making me think scammers have turned ChatGPT loose on the back-cover copy, or even the entire book.

And I’m not going to lie: the first of such messages I received—which came, literally, on publication day—was initially gratifying. It felt good to think someone had dived deep into a piece of writing I poured my soul into. But alas, ‘twas only a robot that read my book.

The message I got this morning, though, was next-level. It seemed to be from an actual editor at a legitimate indie publishing house (I looked her up), reaching out to see what other pieces I might be working on, and whether I’d like to explore a publishing relationship.

The only red flags were (1) some turns of phrase I wouldn’t expect from a literary editor, (2) they got the title of my book wrong—they called it Body in Barrel rather than the correct Body in a Barrel—and (3) the domain name of their email address was “aol.com” and not the domain name of the publishing house.

Dispiriting

Such scammy messages don’t even approach traction with me, but I do find them dispiriting. They target the most vulnerable desires of an artist—to have their work seen and appreciated.

Despite knowing that any message conveyed through my author website is likely spammy or scammy, I can’t help but feel a shot of hope when I see one in my inbox. What if it’s an actual publisher or agent? But then I open the message, and it feels like someone’s taunting me, trivializing the sweat and courage it took to make art and offer it to the world.

It’s not only scam emails I find dispiriting these days. My wife continues to struggle with her recovery from cancer. One of my young-adult children struggles with debilitating long-term effects of Covid-19, layered on top of her autism. My other young-adult child is struggling to break into a shriveled Los Angeles entertainment industry.

At work, the consensus deal to share the shrinking Colorado River, which we water engineers have been aiming at for six years, has failed to materialize, making it more likely I’ll spend the remaining years of my career supporting lawsuits rather than managing water collaboratively.

And these burdens don’t even broach the daily indignities of current American politics, which we so thoughtlessly impose on the entire world. There is so much that feels heavy.

When we say someone has “spirit,” we often mean the person approaches life with zest, energy, enthusiasm, or determination. This is the sense in which my (long list of) burdens has been “dispiriting,” lately. Life has felt a bit tasteless. Even things I generally enjoy—writing, exercising, following soccer—have felt flat. And, though I can’t tell for sure, I attribute that loss of spirit to the cumulative effect of my burdens.

Jesus Gave Up His Spirit

In this emotional context, John 19:30—a verse I encountered in my prayer time on this Good Friday—struck me in a new way:

“When Jesus had received the wine, he said, ‘It is finished.’ Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.”

The verse comes in the middle of John’s account of Jesus’s crucifixion. The expression, “gave up his spirit,” is surely meant to indicate the point at which Jesus died. Often, this way of putting it has made me think of some incorporeal animating substance—spirit—departing from Jesus’s body (whether or not that idea is anachronistically Cartesian).

But what if we thought of it, instead, as a kind of “dispiriting” of Jesus, a surrendering of his energy, his enthusiasm, his motivation—in a word, a yielding of his will?

Of course, this reading says too little. As I noted, the verse really means that Jesus died. But death does entail a loss of will, a yielding to forces beyond our own that take life. So, at a minimum, it doesn’t seem wrong to say that Jesus’s “giving up of his spirit” would include a loss of energy, enthusiasm, determination, or will.

To go further, it seems like part of the point of describing his death this way—as a “giving up of spirit”—is to communicate a kind of surrender of his will to God’s. In the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus prays,

“My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” (Matthew 26:39)

Jesus’s “giving up of his spirit” is the fulfillment of this prayer: in the moment of his death, he yields his drive to live, his will, and embraces God’s will, dark and difficult as it is.

Into Your Hands, O Lord

Of course, those who follow Jesus are also called to imitate his death. In Luke 9:23-24, Jesus says,

“If any wish to come after me, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it.”

What could it mean to take up a cross—an instrument of death—daily? Interpreted literally, we mere mortals could only ever take up a cross once.

In my view, the operative phrase, here, is “let them deny themselves.” The calling is not to literal death, but rather to a daily yielding of will or spirit, just as Jesus gave up his spirit to God on the Good Friday cross. To the extent that the zest, the energy, the motivation, the will that constitutes our lives is different from God’s will for us, we are called to yield, to live daily the compline prayer from Psalm 31:5—“Into your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit.”

So, friend, if, like me, you find yourself lacking in zest, struggling for energy and motivation, beleaguered by the burdens of life—if you find yourself dispirited—perhaps it is not such a bad place to be on this Good Friday. God willing, the zest, the energy, the motivation will return. But for now, only imitate the Savior, and let your spirit rest in the hands of our loving God.

Book News

• Unbeknown to me, a small book club connected with my day job at Metropolitan Water District decided to read Body in a Barrel. Soon after, a woman I didn’t know turned to me in the elevator and said, “Are you Aaron?” She said she was in the book club and loved my book. So encouraging. #lowkeyfamous (lol)

• My interview about Body in a Barrel with veteran investigative journalist and organized crime author, Scott Burnstein, is up on his YouTube channel, Original Gangsters News. Check it out below.

Writing News

• While visiting my family in Vancouver in February, we attended a live interview of about his new novel, Vigil, hosted by the Vancouver Writers Fest. Saunders is one of my favorite writers. He’s down to earth and a great teacher. His A Swim in a Pond in the Rain continues to shape my approach to the craft of writing.

• I’ve decided to continue Lenny and Grace’s story from where it leaves off in Body in a Barrel, so I’ve begun researching criminal court proceedings and the state prison system in Nevada (fascinating!), and laying out notes and ideas for chapters. I also interviewed my uncle, who is a District Attorney in Los Angeles County. My hope is to expand the story into a novel. It feels great to be working on a new project!

Quick Questions with Courtney Ellis

is a pastor, speaker, and author of six books, most recently Weathering Change: Seeking Peace Amid Life’s Tough Transitions (IVP 2026). She also hosts The Thing With Feathers podcast, a show about birds and hope. Courtney lives with her husband Daryl and their three children in southern California.

What inspired your most recent writing project?

I’ve always struggled with change, something I think is true for many—dare I say most—of us.

What’s a piece of writing advice that guides your work?

Karen Swallow Prior () once said that “the work is the platform.” If you’re a writer seeking publication, you’ll often hear about how important platform is—how many followers you have on social media, what your SubStack numbers are, where you are booking speaking engagements, etc. Karen’s wisdom helped me refocus on my writing as a craft, seeking to make it the best it can be and letting that speak for itself, rather than wasting my writing energy running after numbers.

What’s one of your favorite books and why?

I couldn’t possibly name just one, so how about three? James by Percival Everett floored me with its epic storytelling, sweeping imagination, and surprise twists. I adored Deb Rienstra’s Refugia Faith: Seeking Hidden Shelters, Ordinary Wonders, and the Healing of the Earth for its eye to soulful conservation and the delights of the natural world. I made it a goal a few years back to read more contemporary poetry, and currently Seth Wieck’s Call Out Coyote has me riveted. Seth is a keen observer of the southwest, God, and what it means to be human, and his first book of poetry sings.

Reading Recommendations

• Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Partly as thematic inspiration for my new project, I’ve started reading this Russian classic in a new-ish translation by Oliver Ready (linked above). It clips along nicely, has helpful notes, and portrays the protagonist’s jarring state of mind in a way I don’t remember from the time I once started (and didn’t finish) the 1914 translation by Constance Garnett.

• ’s Substack publication, Keep Looking Up. I loved her recent post, “Against Cruelty: Kindness as a non-optional fruit of the Spirit,” and her prolific, pithy Substack notes charm me whenever I open my feed. For all you birders, she has a delightful podcast, “The Thing with Feathers: Birds and hope with Courtney Ellis.” Plus her new book, Weathering Change. (She’s busy!)

• Tenth of December: Stories by George Saunders. Mind-blowing. Just read it. Now.

Compelling Quote

“Raskolnikov walked past at this point and heard no more. He’d slipped by quietly, trying to catch every word. His initial astonishment had given way, little by little, to horror, like ice down his spine. He’d learned, suddenly and quite unexpectedly, that tomorrow, at precisely seven o’clock in the evening, Lizaveta, the old woman’s sister and sole cohabitant, would not be in and that, as a result, the old woman, at precisely seven o’clock in the evening, would be at home on her own. His room was only a few steps away. He entered like a man sentenced to death. He wasn’t thinking, nor was he capable of thinking; but he suddenly felt in every fibre of his being that he no longer had the freedom of reason or will and that everything had suddenly been decided for good.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

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“The Meaning of the Manger”

Jesus, the penniless Messiah, is our sustenance.

Prayer

An Ethiopian prayer from Phyllis Tickle’s The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime:

God, you have prepared in peace the path I must follow today. Help me to walk straight on that path. If I speak, remove lies from my lips. If I am hungry, take away from me all complaint. If I have plenty, destroy pride in me. May I go through the day calling on you, you, O Lord, who know no other Lord.

Book News

• On January 26th, I did an interview with Gary Jenkins on his podcast, Gangland Wire. Gary is a former Kansas City cop who used to work Las Vegas mob cases, We talked about the true-crime events that inspired my recently-published novella, Body in a Barrel. The interview should get posted in a couple of weeks. I’ll share a link in my March newsletter.

  

• I barely announced it before, but Body in a Barrel is available as an audiobook, along with the paperback and ebook versions. You can find it on all the regular channels (Spotify, Audible, Apple Books, etc.). It is read by Grammy-award-winning narrator, , from Skyboat Media. His voice is truly golden—perfect for my mobster tale. Fact: the audiobook is my favorite version of the story. Here are the first two chapters to whet your whistle:

Body in a Barrel, Chapter 1

Body in a Barrel, Chapter 2

Writing News

• Since my January newsletter, I’ve had two short pieces accepted for publication in literary journals. The first is a flash story titled “Moth in a Closet,” to be published in the Maryland Literary Review. The second is an essay, “Eulogy for a Dog,” about the death of our family dog, Hazel, several years ago, to be published in The Orange Rose Literary Magazine. I’ll post the pieces on once they’re out.

Quick Questions with Chad Holley

Chad Holley is the author of Shield the Joyous: A Novel, a finalist for the 2025 Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction. He earned an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and his work has appeared in, among other places, Shenandoah, Greensboro Review, storySouth, and Houghton Mifflin’s Best American Mystery Stories. He lives in Los Angeles with his spouse, singer-songwriter Claire Holley, and their two sons.

What inspired your most recent writing project?

A friend was recently telling me over lunch about a screenwriting project based on songs that are richly evocative of certain periods of his life. He’s a musical guy, used to be in radio, and he had a bunch of these songs. But the only one I could think of for me—or, anyway, the first one I thought of and couldn’t really think beyond—was “Purple Rain,” the indelible anthem and unfailing summons of my junior high school years. I never write to music (unless the twitter of a fan with a bad bearing counts). But I came home and looped “Purple Rain” in the headphones several days running. I don't recommend this. But it did set some interesting things in motion that I’m still exploring.

What’s a piece of writing advice that guides your work?

I don't know whether this counts, but I think more or less daily of David Hockney’s sentiment that the source of art is love, by which I think he means, perhaps above all, the love of life itself.

What’s one of your favorite books and why?

V.S. Pritchett's Midnight Oil. It’s a hilarious, humane, and terrifically inspiring memoir by a first-rate man of letters on turning 70. The sort of book that tends to deepen one’s own sense of writerly (and readerly) vocation.

Reading Recommendations

• Middlemarch by George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans). I recently finished this 1871 Victorian classic for the first time and discussed it with my church fiction group. Amazing. A penetrating portrait of what happens when life doesn’t meet one’s lofty expectations. Full of deep insight into humanity. And leave it to my church book group to have two PhDs in English Literature specializing in the Victorian period, one of whom wrote is his dissertation on George Eliot. High-octane discussion!

• ’s Substack. Essays and reflections from a Professor at Fuller Theological Seminary and long-time New Testament scholar concerned with the role of Scripture in theological formation and the life and mission of the church. Excellent scholarship.

Compelling Quote

“Her finely touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”

— George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), Middlemarch

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Jesus, the penniless Messiah, is our sustenance.

“Thomas Aquinas on Christian Joy”

Aquinas teaches us that joy can persist through life’s sorrows since it depends not on circumstances but on our love for God.

Prayer

A Compline prayer from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, adapted by Phyllis Tickle in her The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime:

Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for your love’s sake. Amen.

Dear Readers,

With the new year, I’m starting (what I hope is) a regular, genuine newsletter, where I share my latest writing and publishing updates. I’m aiming for monthly. I’ll try to keep the letters brief and breezy. The first few will be free, but after a few months, I’ll start putting them behind a (low-priced) paywall, since I assume not all my subscribers will be interested—only those who want to support my writing journey and follow it closely. I welcome feedback on this first issue: things you enjoy, things you could do without, other things you’d like to see. Reply to this email or drop me a Substack message to let me know.

Without further ado . . .

Book News

• Since my novella, Body in a Barrel, is dedicated to the Colorado River water community, I recently did two interviews about the book with Justin Scott-Coe on California’s premier water blog, Maven’s Notebook. The first was a written interview, and the second was a podcast. Both were great fun! We discussed the inspiration and themes of the book, connections with other water-related crime stories, and my publishing journey.

• After the interviews posted on Maven’s Notebook, Gary Jenkins, a former Kansas City cop who used to work Las Vegas mob cases, reached out about a possible interview on his podcast, Gangland Wire. We still haven’t scheduled the interview, but fingers crossed. I’m thinking true crime podcasts could be a great promotional avenue for me. Let me know if you have connections!

• Every year in early December, as part of my day job, I make my way to Las Vegas for the annual Colorado River Water Users Association conference. This year, after the conference, I met with the Communications Manager at the Mob Museum—aka, the National Museum of Organized Crime & Law Enforcement—about possibly doing an author event at the museum and/or selling my book in their gift shop. No decision yet. I visited the museum twice while writing Body in a Barrel, which, of course, revolves around a Las Vegas mob killing from the early 1980s. The museum is fantastic. If you find yourself in Vegas, it’s a must-see.

  

Writing News

• I recently finished the umpteenth editing pass through my novel manuscript, Neither Slave nor Free, an historical novel that tells a dramatic backstory to Paul’s New Testament letter to Philemon. Since the 50+ agents I’d queried had no interest, I’d sent it to a copy editor for a final edit with the plan of publishing it independently in 2026. However, the editor liked the manuscript so much that she encouraged me not to give up on traditional publishing. So I’m going to start querying a new batch of agents soon. (If you’re the praying kind, you know what to do! Finding a traditional publisher for a first novel is a tough game.)

• Book promotion and editing (and life) have consumed my writing time lately, so I’m itching to draft something new. I can’t seem to settle on which of three ideas to start with. If you have a strong preference, let me know (no guarantees!):

  • An expansion of Body in a Barrel into a novel telling the further story of Lenny and Grace.

  • A dystopian novel set in the American west about climate change, water scarcity, synthetic meat production, and illegal immigration from the U.S. to a prosperous Mexico.

  • An epistolary novel tracing an exchange of personal letters between the Apostle Paul and his mother while Paul is on death row in ancient Rome.

Reading Recommendations

• This is Happiness by Niall Williams. I read this a few months ago with my church’s fiction reading group. It’s a charming coming-of-age story written in memoir style that follows the 1958 arrival of electricity to a village in County Clare, Ireland. It’s slow-moving—a welcome rest from our break-neck world—the story is (eventually) engaging, the prose is delicious, and there’s at least one chuckle on every page.

• ’s Substack . Philosophical, theological, poetic, and delightfully counter-cultural.

• Middlemarch by George Eliot. I’m reading this 1871 Victorian classic for the first time with my church fiction group. I’m only 125 pages in, and it’s a beast (754 pages in my edition), but it’s fantastic so far. A penetrating portrait of what happens when life doesn’t meet one’s lofty expectations. It hits very close to home, for me, and it’s unexpectedly hilarious (the quote below!).

Compelling Quote

“‘Oh, there are so many superior teas and sugars now. Superior is getting to be shopkeepers’ slang.’

‘Are you beginning to dislike slang, then?’ said Rosamond, with mild gravity.

‘Only the wrong sort. All choice of words is slang. It marks a class.’

‘There is correct English: that is not slang.’

‘I beg your pardon: correct English is the slang of prigs who write history and essays. And the strongest slang of all is the slang of poets.’”

— George Eliot, Middlemarch (ch. 11)

Recent Posts on sub·plot

“The Meaning of the Manger”

Jesus, the penniless Messiah, is our sustenance.

“Thomas Aquinas on Christian Joy”

Aquinas teaches us that joy can persist through life’s sorrows since it depends not on circumstances but on our love for God.

“Advent and the Virtue of Faith”

Advent waiting grows in us a master virtue by which we cling to the hidden-for-now God, whom we’ll one day see—the virtue we call faith.

Prayer

A morning prayer from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, adapted by Phyllis Tickle in her The Divine Hours: Prayers for Autumn and Wintertime:

Lord God, almighty and everlasting Father, you have brought me in safety to this new day: Preserve me with your mighty power, that I may not fall into sin, nor be overcome by adversity; and in all I do direct me to the fulfilling of your purpose; through Jesus Christ my Lord. Amen.