The Book of Anne is a simple story about a complex subject: the hidden childhood of Jesus. This story is of the child Jesus and of his family and the people around him. It is a combination of
history, geography, tradition, myth and imagination. Scripture tells us the holy family journeyed from exile in Egypt to Galilee, rather than returning to Judea. Historians tell us the father
of Mary was a successful Galilean farmer named Joachim. Like the farmer in the “Parable of the Prodigal Son,” Joachim is thought to have owned large fields in a fertile valley in the Nazarean
hills. Many parables spoken by Jesus were agricultural in nature. It is reasonable to presume he spent time amid wheat and sheep. The Book of Anne paints a picture of what life might have been
like for a wholly human–wholly divine child as told by his grandmother Anne, the mother of Mary.
