Damiano Leone’s The Healer takes place in a not-so-distant future – an era marked by fracture and ambiguity, where the need for a dramatic change for the better is more desperate than ever. And this is where the Advanced Research Centre of Geneva steps in: thanks to the funding provided by the Vatican, a team of Swiss scientists manages to achieve the most ambitious goal – to send a man back in time. The time traveller is Mark Sachs, known as Freezer, and he is set to conduct an unprecedented mission: he has to go back to two thousand years before his time in order to verify the factual existence of Jeshua ben Yosef, eye-witness his resurrection, and ultimately come back to testify the truth to his own contemporaries. However, as soon as Mark climbs to the top of the little hill of Golgotha – the place where the dead body of Jesus of Nazareth was buried in the Sepulchre –, an unexpected twist of fate forces him to abort the mission and rush back to his present. And he does not come unaccompanied: Mark has brought a mysterious passenger back with him; a man who lay dead in his tomb a few minutes earlier, and who is now miraculously back to life. Is he the Son of God, or is he just an ordinary man? Finding the answer will not be easy, especially since the man from the past has lost his memory. Only one thing is for sure: such an event cannot go unnoticed by the mightiest powers in the world – powers that would be severely threatened if the miraculous existence of Jeshua ben Yosef were to be proved. Eminences of the world’s great monotheistic religions start giving chase to the mysterious stranger with different motives: some want to eradicate him; some want to have him on their side to weaken the Vatican; and some want to protect him even at the expense of the hegemony of the Church. As soon as the man from the past lands to a bewildering new world, feeling nothing but confusion, his presence becomes a delicate political matter, only to be magnified by the media circus. Mark will soon become deeply attached to Jeshua: putting his cold aloofness aside, he will learn what trusting another human being means. Helped by Silvie and John, two reporters that will be given the honour to interview the man who could be the Messiah, Mark will do everything to protect the one who could revolution the fate of humanity before it’s too late. The Healer is a compelling, complex novel that explores the character of a man rather than a deity’s – a man destined to become a shining light for a sick and weary world. Jeshua, holding within his heart all the virtue and frailty that make humanity so wonderful, becomes an inspiring symbol for those who want to be better people – for those who wish to learn and be more aware of their path of self-destruction. For “mankind can change”, and the world, our home, can change as well.THE PLOT: Two thousand years back in time, a shining clutter of stars illuminates the night over Jerusalem. In the silent stillness of a rock sepulchre, someone is watching over the body of a man who has been executed: a common sight for that remote, savage era, one might think. And yet things couldn’t be more unusual: the name of that man is Mark Sacks, and he has travelled back in time with the most extraordinary mission ever given. There is a chance that the body he is watching over is the corpse of the man historically known as Jesus of Nazareth. But things don’t go like the Vatican’s higher echelons had liked to, and after Mark travels back to the present taking that man, Jeshua, with him, everybody will find out what a deeply complex individual that stranger is. Jeshua has lost his memory; he has the frame of a warrior rather than that of a visionary prophet, and he is capable of miraculous healing deeds. His unearthly gift makes him the target of a fierce dispute amidst the world’s major economic, political and religious powers. Jeshua, however, will not suffer all the uncalled-for attention, and will go as far as breaking away from the top-secret research centre he has been confined to. He becomes a pilgrim, something that comes very natural to him; and his wandering through this strange, alien world will lead him to Rome. The Eternal City will face Jeshua with the deadliest adversary; an enemy that serves Evil itself throughout the universe, and that is set to wreak havoc in the cradle of Christianity itself.
