Beatrice Gormley

Why I wrote Salome
I'd read the Bible story dozens of times. I'd seen Salome portrayed in movies, always as a heartless slut, maybe 19 or 20 years old.
Then one day something clicked in my mind. Salome couldn't have been more than 13 or 14, because in the Roman Empire in the first century A.D., girls married early.
So maybe Salome wasn't a heartless slut, either. Maybe she was a confused young girl, caught between her lecherous stepfather, Herod Antipas, and her selfish mother, Herodias.
This sounded more and more like the kind of story I saw in the morning newspaper. And come to think of it, there were many parallels between the ancient Roman Empire and our present-day world. . . .

"If I’d never hoped to live in a world of goodness and truth—if the priestess of Artemis, then Leander, and Joanna, hadn’t shown me glimpses of it—maybe I wouldn’t have minded being shut out of it. Maybe the preacher’s death wouldn’t have trapped me in a dungeon, the dungeon of my own self."

Her name is Salome. You may think you know her story…how her seductive Dance of the Seven Veils led to the beheading of John the Baptist. But you don’t know it from her side. You don’t know how a web of betrayal, and greed, and lust was spun around an innocent teenage girl. How she came to doubt her own mother. How she searched for a friend in an unfamiliar land. And how she walked into a trap and changed the course of history.

This is Salome’s story, in her own words. Listen, and learn of strength, of power, of loyalty…and of death.

Publishers Weekly
In this evocative novel based on biblical events, Gormley (C.S. Lewis: The Man Behind Narnia) fleshes out the beguiling story of Salome that has captivated artists and writers for centuries. Readers meet Salome, granddaughter to King Herod of Judea (the one whose actions brought about the celebration of Passover), at age 14, dreaming of becoming a dancer in the Temple of Diana in Rome. Soon her uncle Antipas visits and woos her mother, Herodias, away from Salome’s father, Herod Junior, to begin a new life in Judea. As the novel progresses, Salome begins to develop into an independent-minded, if still uncertain, young woman, drawn to those who live principled lives. The tragedy unfolds when “John the Baptizer” condemns the marriage of Herod and Herodias as adulterous, provoking the wrath of Salome’s self-absorbed mother. Gormley’s retelling weaves a plausible and harrowing description of how in one fateful night Salome becomes a vessel of her mother’s avaricious desires. Salome remains a sympathetic character as she repents her part in the beheading of John the Baptist, and is redeemed through her generous acts. Gormley subtly depicts the larger forces at work (e.g., just before John is led to his execution, he learns that his cousin, Yeshua of Nazareth, is “the One Who Is to Come,” and goes peacefully to his death). The author’s rendering of Salome’s reflection on the events are appropriately prophetic: “Maybe, in years to come, the story of the Baptizer’s death would be the only thing that anyone remembered about me.”
Ages 12 and up.

Kirkus
An infamous teen femme fatale tells her side of this familiar New Testament story of desire and
death. Raised in Rome as the only child of Jewish nobility, 14-year-old Salome loves dancing and hopes to become a priestess of Diana. Everything changes when her spoiled, scheming mother, Herodias, ditches her husband to marry her brother-in-law, Herod Antipas, Tetrarch of Galilee. Transported to the
land of her ancestors, Salome becomes embroiled in the political intrigue created by a popular Jewish prophet, John the Baptizer, who preaches repentance to the poor and accuses Herod of breaking Jewish law by marrying his brother's wife. Threatened by the Baptizer as well as Herod's growing attraction to
Salome, Herodias manipulates the innocent Salome to demand John's beheading after beguiling Herod with her seductive dancing. How Salome accepts responsibility for her tragic actions and transforms her own life by following the message of the man she has killed gives her a modern relevancy far beyond her Biblical antecedent. A fresh look at an old story. (afterword) (Fiction. 12-16)