Book 1:

Betrothed and Exile

The Story of Joseph and Mary from Betrothal to Exile in Egypt
by Rosanne Markham

A two-part Biblical Historical fiction novel set during the untold decades surrounding the Nativity and the early years of Christ’s life.

Part One, Betrothed, follows Joseph — a master carpenter of the House of David — from the Temple courts of Jerusalem to a small synagogue rising stone by stone in Nazareth. Around him, a community takes shape: a crew of laborers who become brothers, a tailor father who prays over his only daughter, neighbors whose gossip and kindness arrive in equal measure. Into this world comes an angel’s impossible word, and a man who must decide whether to build a life on a foundation he cannot inspect first.

Part Two, Exile, moves into Mary’s voice. She is fifteen, a mother, and, eventually, a fugitive. She flees Bethlehem with knowledge that Herod’s soldiers are coming for her son, knowing she must protect him at all costs. In Alexandria, exile slowly becomes community again — Passover kept far from home, a rabbi who tells her son stories by lamplight, a friendship forged over wash water and shared sorrow. The family that returns to Nazareth is not the one that left.

Throughout, the rhythms of Jewish life — betrothal law, the High Holy Days, mikvah, circumcision, Passover — carry the story forward not as explanation but as lived experience, the way faith actually moves through ordinary days.