The Gospel of the Twin (29 page)

Acknowledgements

Thanks go to my friends Bill Cole Cliett and Peter Dunbaugh Smith, who read and commented on an early draft of this novel.

Many thanks go to sharp-eyed editors Harrison Demchick and Katharine Mead-Brewer.

I am also grateful to Marty Perlmutter whose philosophy of religion class at the College of Charleston still inspires me thirty-five years later.

While my formal training is in philosophy, and I do not consider myself a scholar of religion, I have spent years studying and being deeply affected by the work of some great scholars, most notably John Dominic Crossan, Marcus Borg, Elaine Pagels, Bart Erhman, and Marvin Meier. I apologize to them for anything they may find embarrassing in this novel.

Finally, I thank Fred Chappell, who listened to me describe this novel before it was written and gave me kind words of encouragement.

The Author

This is Ron Cooper's third published novel. His first was
Hume's Fork
, which Ron Rash, a PEN/Faulkner Award Finalist, called “one of the funniest novels I've read in a long time.” The publication of his second,
Purple Jesus
, was, wrote
The Washington Post
, “a literary event of the first magnitude.”

He lives in Ocala, Florida, with his wife Sandra (also a College of Central Florida faculty member) and their three children.