Why I have written The Day of the Labyrinth

I have written The Day of the Labyrinth http://www.dayofthelabyrinth.com out of a heart for children and young people, a desire to explore and promote love as an alternative way of being, and the belief that historical fantasy is a natural genre for expressing this. These motives have in turn been inspired by my childhood friendships with adults who took children seriously and who were themselves motivated by the idea of a world built on radical love and kindness. Some were captivating storytellers and they showed me that narrative has the power to expose and reconstruct the world.

A heart for children and young people

When I was a youngster, I read all the fiction I could get hold of and was always building and experimenting with alternative worlds inside my head with the help of railway sets, board games and other toys and models. Now with the added advantage of virtual reality I believe that despite the assertions of some so-called experts, many children and young people can engage easily with concepts and big existential questions such as those raised by this book.  It is written as an attempt, in part, to see the world through their eyes.

I am convinced that adults can only deeply understand and reflect on life if they do so with and alongside children and young people. The book demonstrates this process, and it is designed so that while thinking children and adults can read and engage with it on their own, they can also read and enjoy it together. As a child, and then as a teacher and a parent, I experienced the magic of being read to and reading to others and this book is positioned for that. The juxtaposition of its characters, the deliberate way that it encompasses the passage of lifetimes and the provision of a glossary to enable the use of terms and language of another era is intended to inspire and help maximum engagement.

One of the tragedies of our factory-like education system is that it frequently fails to honour young people and give them the opportunity to mature creatively or contribute to the learning process alongside their teachers and their syllabus. I am convinced that children and young people need access to the deep issues of life and the universe and that egalitarian relationship with adults who value and treat them as equals while recognising their vulnerability and immaturity, helps them achieve that. This book aims to provide an example of young women and men who had close and mutual relationships with influential adults that challenged accepted norms and brought about significant social and political change. As such, it is a potential tool for this to continue to happen.

A desire to explore and promote love as an alternative way of being

I grew up in a relatively conservative and legalistic expression of Christianity where it became quickly obvious to me that there were those radically loving people who saw me and loved me for who I was, and those who were about their own religious agenda and either ignored or belittled me. The quality of life that surrounded the former and its potential to reconfigure the rest of society both inside and outside our religious community became an early driver for my life as a community worker, researcher, political theologian and activist and now issues in this novel.

The story traces and questions the interplay between the two expressions of Christianity in the days when the Roman Empire was embracing it as its official religion. I have worked hard to avoid a polemical antipathy to empire but instead to interpose the alternative way of love at a pivotal moment for the outworking of Christianity in the West. The narrative exposes and investigates key points and questions around the difference between the radical message of Jesus as testified by the four gospels, and the partnership of church and empire that impregnated much of established Christianity from the fourth century onwards.

The book explores the question of how the radical message of love and equality became a religion that affirmed hierarchy and sovereignty. By focusing on the loving protagonists of the French legend of Quentin and Eusébie and contrasting them with the contemporary historical figures of Constantine the Great and Eusebius of Caesarea, core Western symbols and myths are positioned in ways that illustrate the historical paths taken to justify control and domination over against life and freedom. The plot builds on notorious events such as the battle of Milvian Bridge and the murders of Constantine’s wife and son to expose ways that despite its radically loving roots, bullying, abuse and violence become normalised in the structures and experience of politics and the Christian religion.

Points and questions about my use of historical fantasy as a genre for today

Books that deal with alternative worlds such as The Narnia Chronicles, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Harry Potter series and His Dark Materials have had a massive impact on recent generations of children, young people and adults, including my own children and grandchildren, and myself.  The Day of the Labyrinth unashamedly engages the same device of alternative fantasy worlds with the genre of historical fiction to consider the different impacts on political history that the empire and love streams had or might have had and in so doing invites us to apply the same insight to our present day experiences. 

By beginning the story with an eight-year-old girl and choreographing her relationships with the adults of her family and their ensuing children across fifty years of epochal history, the novel is able to portray the potential of their inclusive strength to achieve intergenerational social change. The challenging experiences provided by the social and political upheaval of the fourth century CE allows for difficult but realistic subject matter to be introduced. Rather than positing a sentimental or utopian vision of history, the fantasy genre allows for distance while dealing with difficult, disappointing and even heinous experiences and events. However, at the same time it allows for seemingly supernatural interventions for the common good.

The narrative deliberately raises the question of how stories about imaginary alternatives to established official history help people rethink the accepted norms of our contemporary society. Readers’ pre-publication engagement with the book has already raised the question of whether the genre distinguishes adequately the difference between historical fiction and the “fake truth” so rampant on social media. It has been suggested that a résumé of historical facts could accompany the glossary in future editions. Nevertheless, my research into the relationship between church and empire reveals how our own deeply rooted assumptions about truth can skew our view of history, and fake truth might go wider than we think. Imaginative reappraisals of commonly held opinions about the facts of history and their implications for faith and politics like this novel may therefore be a good thing!