"I read this book with great pleasure. It is historical, but presented with a deeply poetic flourish that renders the narrative dramatic and compelling." - William Tronzo (Ph. D., Harvard), Professor of Art History, Editor of St. Peter's in the Vatican
"A remarkable achievement. An incredible story told in an engaging and unique way...with a deft balance between the historical and poetic narratives." - Ross Bressler, Ph. D, Professor of Art History at Berklee
For nearly two thousand years, one question has endured beneath the heart of Rome: Is this where Peter rests?
Under the soaring dome of St. Peter's Basilica, beneath marble floors and layers of sacred history, lies a tomb that has drawn emperors, popes, pilgrims, archaeologists, and skeptics across the centuries.
And the tiniest observer watched it all.
Light Upon You is a sweeping narrative history of the tomb of the apostle Peter, told from the unexpected and unforgettable perspective of a church mouse. From its humble first-century beginnings to the secretive twentieth-century excavations beneath the Vatican, this meticulously researched story brings to life the people, legends, doubts, discoveries, and devotions that gathered around one of Christianity's most mysterious sites.
Drawing on ancient inscriptions, the Liber Pontificalis, medieval accounts, papal correspondence, Vatican archaeological reports, and modern scholarship, Light Upon You transforms centuries of historical record into a vivid, lyrical story of memory, faith, and human longing.
This is not only a story about the bones of a fisherman. It is a story about what we preserve, what we believe, and what endures when empires, buildings, and even certainty begin to crack.
Perfect for readers of Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, Walter M. Miller Jr.'s A Canticle for Leibowitz, and Carlos Ruiz Zafón's The Shadow of the Wind, Light Upon You is a luminous work of sacred history and literary imagination.