The Sudarium Trilogy -- The Surrogate Book I

The epic story of a holy relic, an innocent girl, a diabolical experiment that threatens to rip society asunder, and a young man who must find his soul, if he is to save himself. "The Sudarium Trilogy" is a thriller for our times. THE SURROGATE: BOOK ONE In a remote corner of the Cathedral of Oviedo in Spain, Father Miguel Alvarez is in charge of taking care of the most holy relic of all Christendom: the sudarium, the towel-sized cloth which covered the face of Christ immediately following his death. At eighty years of age, behind the heavy grated door to the Camara Santa (the Holy Chamber), he prays fervently before the relic. Suddenly, a pair of hands grips his head, forcing him to breathe a moistened cloth that causes him to lose consciousness. Not, however, before he sees a masked figure with a scalpel in his hand leaning over the holy bloodstained sudarium. Seven years later, in Fall River, Massachusetts, Hannah Manning, a 19 year-old waitress, is waiting for a sign - something that will tell her what she is supposed to be doing with her life. One day, she notices an advertisement in the newspaper looking for surrogate mothers. The emptiness in Hannah's life suddenly subsides; she seems to have found something meaningful to do with herself. Instead of finding fulfillment as a surrogate mother, however, Hannah ends up taking a terrifying journey deep into a land of fanaticism and zealotry.