Doctor Luke's Assistant

Author: David A. Todd
Genre: Biblical Fiction

Luke, the beloved physician, returns to Israel to write a massive biography of Jesus. He hires a Jewish assistant, Augustus, to help him as a researcher, secretary, and scribe. Luke's work is opposed by both the Roman government and the Jewish authorities. He runs afoul of an ambitious Roman, who does his best to restrict Luke from completing the work.

Augustus is conscientious, but somewhat of a bumbler in his work. He becomes enamored with a girl in the Jerusalem church. To win her affections he finds a way to obtain the release of her dad from prison—except in doing so he breaks the law and Luke is blamed for it. The work almost comes to a halt.

It continues, however, as Luke and Augustus spend much time in Judea and Galilee, finding witnesses, interviewing them, looking at time and space issues with Jesus' life. The biography is finished after three years. Luke's nemesis in the government, however, has different plans.

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Reviewer: Lynn Rountree

David Todd does an excellent job telling the story of Luke, the doctor, and historian in the bible. 

Luke has always been one of my favorite books in the bible due to its thoroughness. 

I am DELIGHTED that this author follows that pattern and really pulls you into the story with well thought out research, biblical fact and history. 

This is a based on fact story of how it could have been and I commend his weaving of truth and fiction. 

I gave it four stars due to some details being too many and at times I had to push through to read it. But overall I definitely recommend this book.

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Reviewer: Camille Murray

I’m sorry to have to give this book such a poor review, because I realize the author is trying to do a good thing with his writing. When I first read the back cover, I was intrigued by the concept, and was excited to see what the author did with it.
 
Sadly, instead of a compelling historical fiction novel, I found the book was mainly a comparison of some of the Gospels and an exploration of what methods might have been used in Luke’s research. What little plot there was existed mainly in the latter half of the book, and even there it was thinly scattered and not used to its full advantage. Neither did the dialogue or characterization do anything to hold my interest, both of these being pretty flat.
 
So, while I appreciate the author’s attempts, I’m going to have to honestly say that I would never have finished reading this book except that I was determined to review it.

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