In the ancient town of Ephesus, Mary lives alone, years after her son's crucifixion. She has no interest in collaborating with the authors of the Gospel, who are her keepers. She does not agree that her son is the Son of God; nor that his death was "worth it"; nor that the "group of misfits he gathered around him, men who could not look a woman in the eye," were holy disciples.

Colm Tóibín: "The idea came to me that I could give a voice to Mary, the mother of Jesus, the silent woman at the foot of the cross. I went to Ephesus and began to imagine her in the years after the Crucifixion, as the new dawn of Christianity was emerging in the world, and the story of what happened was being written down. She was, as I saw her, still locked in a grief that would not lift. Her two visitors are clearly some of the apostles, the men who wrote the New Testament."